The Reclamation Effect
by Twisted Platypus
Summary: Saren is dead and the Reapers have been defeated- for now. But nothing stays the same, no matter how much you want it to. For some, the spoils of our first battle was survival. For others, even that was withheld. Now it's time to fight again, to reclaim what was lost. Sequel to the Transmigration Effect. Increasingly AU. Cover design by @markgdaniels.
1. Prologue

_I want to reclaim who I am._

* * *

_**The Reclamation Effect**_

_**Prologue**_

* * *

It's a beautiful day on the Citadel. It always is.

The fires and debris and broken glass kind of kill the effect, though.

The screen in front of me stabilises, static giving way to the image of a young, attractive woman. She looks to be in her late twenties, with shoulder-length red hair and a light dusting of freckles. Green eyes gleam cheerfully from an open face, and she smiles easily. It's good to see a smile, especially now.

"Tobias," she says in greeting, waving at her camera.

"You know I prefer Parker, Shepard." I retort, but I can't help myself from smiling despite my headache. It is good to hear my name every now and then, as much as I might like to gripe about it. "How's the Omega Nebula?"

"Pretty empty, really," she says, smile fading. "We all feel pretty useless, I think. Especially with the Reapers still out there, and the Citadel like it is. How is it on your end? You look like you're about to keel over."

I don't need as much rest as other people do thanks to a mishap with the Rachni Queen on Noveria, but this last month has me working harder than I ever have before, and even my enhanced endurance is failing.

"The Citadel's pretty enough, if you ignore the bloodstains, the bullet holes and the missing Ward. Do I really look that bad?" I ask half-heartedly. I'd hoped I wasn't looking as bad as the other doctors.

"Big bags under your eyes, pale skin, you're thinner, hair looks unwashed and you've got a raggedy beard," Shepard lists off, somehow without seeming malicious. "You look like shit."

Honestly, I feel like shit. Much like my apartment, I guess. The apartment Eri and I used to share is messy, dirty and more than a little battered, a casualty of the damage inflicted upon the Citadel wards during the Reaper/Geth attack. Still, it's a whole lot better than most other buildings. And the people fared a lot worse than the infrastructure did.

And everyone fared better than Tayseri Ward.

I force the thoughts away. I have enough nightmares when I sleep. I don't need them while I'm awake.

"It's pretty bad," I admit, grateful to be sitting down. "I'm working overtime at the hospital every day, and some of it is pretty disheartening. There are still people being brought in and dying every day." I won't let what happened on Noveria happen again, when I put spying ahead of my medical training. I couldn't have lived with myself if I didn't do everything I could to help.

"We should be back soon, a week or something." She looks around, says something to someone offscreen. "I have to go. See you when we get back to the Citadel?"

"With pleasure." I smile. The image disappears. The last month has been a hard one for Annelise Shepard, with the death of nearly half her squad in the battle against Saren. My smile falters at the thought of Ashley Williams, Wrex and even Kaidan, but I've had time to process it. Maybe if I'd done something different they'd still be here. Maybe if I'd just…

There is nothing but the will of the queen.

I know I shouldn't, but channelling the Rachni memories isolates the pain. Rachni focus exclusively on duty and mine isn't done yet. I can grieve and be emotional afterwards. My omnitool beeps, and where Shepard's vibrant smile once was a haggard, harrowed salarian doctor appears, people of all races moving hurriedly in the background.

"We need you in here," he says, abandoning the pleasantries. There hasn't been much time for them recently. "One of my people collapsed, and we need more hands. How long?"

I'm moving the moment the first words are out of his mouth. At the rate the doctors are dropping from exhaustion, we'll need another wing just for them. I grab an energy drink on the way out, pulling a jacket on as the last words filter into my brain. "Five minutes," I respond, closing the tool. It's a twenty minute walk. My whole body aches from sleep deprivation, my head feels like it's about to split open and every photon feels like a knife in my brain.

I start sprinting.

* * *

Sometimes I wonder if the weather setting was intentional. You know, like a way to take the edge off the chaos and mayhem of the Geth attack. I pull my hat down further over my face as a pair of Asari jog past, leaning tiredly against the bench, looking out at the lake. The Citadel's water reserve was dyed brown by the combined blood of the Council races, but the Keepers repaired the filtration systems almost immediately. Now the lake was a pristine blue again, as if nothing had ever happened.

I don't know. I guess I felt like things were being forgotten, even if nobody is trying to hide the scars. That's the nature of sentient beings, I guess. Denial is our way of life. Not even three weeks gone, and memories start to fade. Soon people would forget the terror of being hunted, rationalising it to a momentary concern.

My memories were another point of contention. They're starting to return, albeit slowly and randomly. Things just click sometimes, when I see or hear or feel something I associate with my past life. Like knowing that Sovereign's true name was Nazara, it just snapped into place like I'd never lost it. The big stuff like the existence of the Reapers never left, but still. The devil is in the details.

Did it mean I was finally getting over the trauma of the Queen sifting through my mind? I hope so.

For now the Citadel was in a state of emergency, but the atmosphere of panic and chaos had all but disappeared. I mean, it was a good thing, right? People need normality.

People also forget much too easily.

But for the moment, we of Shepard's team are all A-list celebrities, something eons away from comfortable for me. I knew being part of Shepard's team would get me a name, but I know militaries that could learn persistence from the damn tabloids. All that, and I'm probably the least famous of the crew. The only reason I could escape them in the hospital was thanks to the C-Sec presence rebuffing them.

The fact that I might have threatened to put the reporters in a hospital _bed_ if they distracted me might have helped.

I'd dodged interviews, found reasons not to go to press conferences and flat-out ignored the thank-yous and 'requests' for meetings to discuss 'potential future partnerships' many times over.

No, thank you. I am a spy; I don't like publicity. But despite all my efforts, my picture is still circulating the extranet as a member of Shepard's heroic crew. At least I'm not as famous as Shepard or Garrus or Liara, by far the three most high-profile members of the crew. Probably because Garrus and Liara are Council races, and Shepard is Shepard.

I did manage to find a few hours to myself, though. There were a few questions I had to answer, research tasks I'd been gathering while we were chasing Saren. Chief among them, what exactly was happening when I used Life Transfusion.

This might be 2183, but there are and will always be certain inviolable laws. Conservation of energy, for example. You could never, under any circumstances, create energy from nothing. Therefore, when I turned Life Transfusion on the extra energy had to come from somewhere.

It took a few hours of tentative experimentation, especially since I couldn't exactly ask the other doctors for help. In the end, though, I figured it out. I still have no idea what acts as the 'trigger' and how exactly it activates, but I managed to find where the extra energy comes from.

Interestingly, it was an ability that humans already have, even if it's buried and subconscious. Autophagy, the last-resort biological process of a gravely injured or undernourished creature in order to continue living. In autophagy, a body would break down working non-essential components in order to repair damaged essential systems, or provide energy for essential procedures like movement or breathing. Life Transfusion was far more aggressive than normal autophagy, but the basic idea was the same.

In effect I am self-cannibalising myself every second for more power. I'll recover given time to rest, but excessive continual use would break down my body from the inside out, eventually causing death by consecutive massive organ failures.

So… not something I want to rely on, then.

I feel myself slipping into sleep, just lounging on the bench. I reluctantly push myself forward, waking myself up again. The last three weeks have been non-stop and the total hours of sleep I'd had would be around eighteen, but it still wasn't time to rest.

I suppose I could have slept some more, but sleep never came easily to me. The Shadow Broker is still out there, and presumably still of the intent to bury me six feet under. Intellectually I knew that with my newfound celebrity status killing me might be more trouble than it was worth, especially taking into account the chaos of the Citadel.

C-Sec was mauled pretty badly, but they weren't the only ones. Everyone's chains of command would have been ripped apart, from small-time crime networks to the Broker himself. Or herself, I guess. For the time being, I shouldn't have to worry about a hidden knife coming for me, if only because getting coherent instructions would be a miracle.

It didn't help me sleep without a gun, though.

* * *

Another week passes. Another week, where it's rare if I don't need to wash the blood of the injured and dying off my arms less than four times a day.

Liara's call finds me an hour after the end of my shift, lying in the comfiest chair I have, dead to the world.

Shepard's gone.

Total call duration, three minutes and twenty-two seconds. Most of it spent in utter silence and Liara's tearful sobbing.

Cold. I feel… very cold. Shock, most likely. Emotional anaesthesia.

Annie Shepard is dead.

There's a deep emotion, buried beneath layers of unfeeling, numbing cold. Buried so deep I almost can't tell it's there, so deep that in trying to find it I might lose myself for good.

Fire and ice. Rage and pain. Shock and grief.

I am disparate. Silt. Flowing, escaping all confinement and bindings. If I could I'd separate my mind into a billion pieces and order them all to run.

Some part of me is injured, I know that much. It's unavoidable really, considering the news. Wounds affect the physical body, and I just want to leave it behind, float free, escape. Run away.

How sad it is that we three-dimensional beings are aware of higher dimensions. It seems so cruel, to know that so much that _might be_ is always just out of our reach. We see the things that could be, realms of infinite possibility that our minds simply can't _comprehend_ but we can't so much as _touch them_ to use them to _runaway_ and _leave it all behind_ and _escape_ and no, don't panic because panic triggers _fight or flight_ and-

I'm already wounded. There is no escape. No running. Wounds don't just affect the physical.

What is a soul, that it can be hurt?

I know what that pain is, that rising emotion. It grows as the ice melts; was it bound? Or does it just devour everything as it expands?

My Queen is dead. My Singer is gone.

I feel adrift. So hopelessly alone, no brood-mates to seek. No colony to defend. Alone.

Vengeance. Retribution. Reprisal. Revenge. Recrimination. So many words for the same thing.

It's different for Rachni. There are no words, no clever therapies.

There is a sound, though. There is a colour. The colour of blood spilt to honour the memory of the dead.

There's a feeling. A duty, responsibility, conviction, requirement. Deathsingers. The survivors of a dead Queen, their only task to obliterate all existence of their Queen's murderers.

The blood-songs for dead Queens have killed entire _species_.

There's no hesitation, no human emotion amongst the roaring sea of flashing colours and sounds.

I call Liara back. She picks up on the fourth ring.

"When?" I ask simply. There's nothing else that we could be discussing.

"Twenty-two hours ago," she replies, tears in her voice.

Almost a full day. The fact gives me pause for a second, derails my Rachni half. The insectoid race has a connection of some sort, a mental awareness of their Queen. They know instantly if she is injured or killed, and react accordingly. It took me nearly a full day and someone needing to tell me.

"Who?" I ask, trying to be less callous, a touch softer. I'm not the only one struggling.

"We don't know," she replies regretfully. "I… I was never in the bridge. I didn't see anything. All I know is that we came under attack from two unknown enemies and that stealth did nothing. Shepard ordered me to assist the crew in getting to their escape pods while she went after Joker. From what he told me, she sacrificed herself to make sure he survived."

"Anyone else make it out?"

"Garrus and I are unharmed. Tali left for the Migrant Fleet a few days ago. Two or three of the crew made it, but everyone else..."

I could forgive her for not caring so much about the losses amongst the _Normandy's_ crew. Many of them had shared Ashley's early sentiments about allowing non-humans on the Alliance's most high-spec warship, and few of them had become what I'd consider even acquaintances.

The silence stretches on, neither of us with anything to say. Finally, I break the silence.

"What are you going to do now? What about Garrus?"

"We're on board an Alliance cruiser, the SSV _Bendigo_. It's bringing us back to the Citadel… I don't know. I can't believe it."

The call ends on a sour note, and I try to sort out my emotions. I'm not used to feeling so strongly about things, in general; I'm both introverted and practiced at dispassionately examining situations. This, though… This is different. Harder. Somehow.

I dealt with Wrex's execution, Ashley's death, Kaidan's passing. I didn't cry over them. I did my grieving after the mission was over, but I could always step back from the emotion, get perspective and continue on. I could do something else; tend to something that demanded my full attention.

This though, I have no idea how to deal with this. I want to punch something, break something into tiny little pieces so I can empathise with it. My fist is raised before I figure that if I blow out the wall of my apartment I'd need to find another place to live. If I hit the wall without biotics, I didn't trust myself not to smash my bones into powder.

I feel so strong, strong enough to take on any fight and win. And yet I feel so weak, so impotent and insignificant compared to the enormity of the galaxy. What could I do, just one life? One set of hands? Destruction was always so much easier than creation.

Then comes the doubt, the thought that I've failed, that something was badly wrong. I believed that maybe when I had died and been somehow reincarnated into the present day it was for a _purpose_.

Now the hope of the galaxy was dead, and there was a chance, however slim, that I could have prevented it. I could have _changed_ it. So much for a higher purpose.

And at the same time, how could I have done anything about it? The _Normandy_ was stalked and killed by a powerful ship, one that could apparently pierce the _Normandy's_ state-of-the-art stealth technology. I didn't even know that was possible, let alone how it happened. If Shepard was being hunted like that, I don't think I could have done anything to stop them. I might have been able to change the ship's course, dodge an attack or two. But avoiding isn't stopping, and nobody can dodge forever. Most likely, the only thing I would have accomplished was dying alongside her.

It was a thought my Rachni half wished for fervently.

After all, Liara, Garrus or Joker, none of them had managed to prevent the attack, or save Shepard's life. What was I supposed to do? It was their fault! If they hadn't fucked up, then this wouldn't have happened!

Righteous wrath doesn't have much force if you don't believe it.

I can't blame Liara, or Garrus, or even Joker. The man cares- cared about the _Normandy_ like it was it was his own child. He would have never simply let it get destroyed and if eluding the enemy was beyond Joker's skill it was beyond any other pilot in the Alliance. In the end, from what Liara told me, Shepard had a choice between Joker and herself, and she chose the disabled pilot. What was he supposed to do, knock her out and save her?

It was just like her to sacrifice her own life for one of her crew. And as heartless as it is, I wish she'd made the other choice.

I pass hours with thought, sometimes sitting, sometimes pacing furiously. Never still for long, though, and numerous times I had to pull back at the last second from lashing out and destroying something.

I am alone. Not in the metaphysical sense, or any kind of deep understanding of the concept of 'alone'. Not in a paranormal sense, not in any special way. There was literally no one that I could turn to for comfort and understanding. I have no friends to call on, no acquaintances, no family. Not while Erintrea is still fighting for her life on Thessia.

For a long time, the only thing that moves in my apartment is my new pet. I felt like I had to make the place look liveable, at least. Now, though, it just seems absurd.

Hours later, I fall into fitful sleep.

* * *

Garrus and Liara are quietly returned to the Citadel the following night. Garrus manages to find a bed in the C-Sec barracks but Liara is distraught, barely able to function. I let her stay at my place. I'm not sleeping well anyway. She looks like I feel, and the full-body scarring from Saren's biotic attack doesn't improve the image. Tiny white lightning-like scars cover most of her body, mostly cosmetic but still disfiguring by modern standards. I know she's planning on getting skin grafts to remove them, but there just hasn't been time.

I leave a note and go to the hospital, forcing all thoughts of Shepard out of my mind. Just twelve hours, just a short time.

I feel like I'm disrespecting her memory. But she would approve, right? I'm trying to help people.

Who am I kidding? I don't even know if there's a reason to help people anymore. Now that Shepard's gone, the Reapers will wipe us out in a few years. She was the beacon, the rallying call that we all fell in behind.

I can't do that. Nobody else can do that. That was the thing that made her special, the thing that set her apart.

The hours pass slowly, and despite everything I can't focus. Shepard, unknown enemies, the Reapers, the Shadow Broker, Cerberus. There's too much, too much to keep track of. The chains of thought whirl endlessly in my head, fragmenting and falling to pieces. I can't keep track of it all, not like this.

I don't know what to do. I've always had a plan; a course of action I knew would advance my ultimate goal. Namely, preparing the galaxy for the Reaper invasion by assisting Shepard and making her life as uncomplicated as possible. But that plan doesn't _work_ without Shepard, and I bet everything I had on her. I never made a back-up plan, never seriously thought about doing it without her.

And now I have to.

It's a whole new realm of uncertainty, so many things I'd thought sealed and done reopened and newly problematic. The Council, mercenaries and the disparate governments of the galaxy. Without someone to _follow_, they won't fall in line. Without a charismatic and skilled leader, there's no figurehead, no army. Who else can do that? Garrus might, if he wasn't plagued by insecurities. Maybe.

The other option is me, as loath as I am to consider it. But I could never lead by example or inspire people in the same way Shepard did. Realistically, the only way I could lead is through fear, and that's never going to be effective.

I can feel myself spiralling into uselessness, running that vicious cycle until it tears me apart.

Helping people is fine. Just keeping them alive for a few more years so they can get turned into Husks isn't.

When I get back from the hospital, Liara is waiting for me.

"The date for the funeral is set," she tells me. "It's tomorrow, in the Alliance staging area. It's going to be a space burial. And that thing you asked me about; I don't know. The ship went down over Alchera, but aside from that..."

No matter. It's still early days.

I'd half thought that the Council would want the funeral to be televised across the galaxy from in front of the Relay Monument. However it was done, I'm glad the public spectacle was averted. The night passes painfully slowly, but the morning still comes too soon. The moment our air taxi lands in front of the Alliance compound, swathes of reporters envelop us like a pack of ravening hyenas. It's not public knowledge that Shepard is dead, even now. But secrets exist to be exposed, and one like this won't stay quiet.

I feel like killing them.

This was a time for mourning, for letting go, for grieving. Ordinarily I tolerated reporters, even enjoyed watching them pin down politicians with knowledge of supposedly hidden deeds.

This is different.

I push through the crowd mutely, Liara taking advantage of my bluntness to follow in my wake. I ignore the microphones, the cameras, the bodies. I wonder if any of them are aware just how close to death they'd come until the gates to the restricted area opened and we leave the mob behind.

Garrus is there already, along with some of the Normandy crew. Joker is there, as is Adams and to my surprise, Tali. I thought she'd gone back to the Migrant Fleet already. I suppose when she got the news she just turned around. The rest of the attendees are government or military representatives, all of them. No family to weep over the casket, and for all I know her Alliance friends are deployed elsewhere or they just haven't heard. Or dead.

I don't know whose decision it was to hold the service so quickly, so haphazardly. Perhaps that's for the best. Half of me still feels the call of the deathsinger and I have to stand in place, eyes closed, just breathing for a long time.

Breathe. In, out. Human. No Rachni, no rage. Calm. Peace.

"I have no idea how you got in here," an acerbic voice says, directed at me. By the tone and the voice, I know who it is.

"You barely knew her and your presence here is unnecessary," Ambassador Udina all bit spits. Intellectually, I know he's furious that Shepard recommended Anderson over him for the position of humanity's Councilor. Intellectually, I know he's just taking his frustrations out on me, a convenient target. My ordinary response would be to ignore the barking of wounded pride, just to smile and ignore.

The deathsinger has other ideas:

Kill him.

Cleave, rip, destroy, obliterate. Tear, maim, cut! Annihilate those responsible! Vengeance and death!

KILL HIM!

Before I know it my hand is streaking toward the politician's face, nails out ready to pierce eyes and rend flesh, green biotics streaking across the skin. My eyes are wide, mouth open in savage euphoria, teeth bare in anticipation of the kill. My whole being cries out for blood, and life for life. Blood and repentance. Vengeance and death. Atonement and absolution, forever and ever.

And underneath it all, grief and sadness so palpable it brings tears to my eyes.

There will never be words. But there is a sound. There is a colour.

I sit down, hard. I crush my hands mercilessly under my backside, cross my legs and just sit in the middle of the reception area. Too close, too close to losing control. Udina doesn't know how to respond, but I suppose nearly having your skull crushed by a deathsinger isn't something you're ever prepared for. But more than anything, I'm ashamed that I very nearly proved him right. Funerals are a place for peace. Not for bloodshed.

No matter how much it's deserved or called for.

The politician looks down at me with a strange expression on his face. "For Shepard. Not for you," I grunt, slowly rising back to my feet.

Is this the first time that he's come close to death? I suppose it must be. Ordinarily he might fall back on bluster, threatening and throwing out snide comments. But no amount of political power would have stopped me from tearing his throat out then and there, nor would any repercussion have swayed me. It's not a human instinct; it's not something a normal person would consider. But such is the way of the deathsinger. Regardless of the damage taken, you destroy the enemy. Always. No, you never just destroy the enemy. You remove all trace that they ever existed.

The former ambassador's pale face gapes uncertainly for a few seconds, before he abruptly takes a few steps backwards. "You're more beast than man," he says. It's not condescension, just pure incomprehension. And humanity has always feared what it doesn't comprehend. I force out a hoarse laugh, looking him in the eye. I feel like shit, and right now all I want is for everyone else to feel as shit as I do.

"No beast," I spit vindictively. "Monster." Yeah. I'm a monster, so that you don't have to be.

* * *

Admiral Hackett leads the service, Councilor Anderson performing the reading. His eyes meet mind for a second, and he nods almost imperceptibly, just once. It's a short ceremony, brief and honest. The coffin is empty, merely window dressing to a sombre, melancholy ceremony. I don't know if she would have liked it, that quiet requiem.

Who cares, some part of me says. What does it matter if she would have liked it or not? She's dead. I lock my jaw and push the thought away.

Present, of course, are the three representatives of the most well-regarded races of the galaxy. Valern leads them as they enter, probably a nod to his seniority. Of the current iteration of the Citadel Council, the Salarian is the only one to survive the Battle of the Citadel. The Alliance staging area is in surprisingly good condition, considering that the battle was only a month ago.

"Annelise Shepard was a paragon of duty, responsibility, and virtue. We will all miss her very much." Anderson finishes, his face pale and drawn, much like the squad. As he speaks the last words, the pallbearers carry the casket to an airlock and as we watch as it vents into space, vanishing into the abyss.

I stand separately from Garrus, Liara and Tali. Why? The three of them are obviously distraught, Liara crying and by the shaking of the machinist's shoulders I suspect her of shedding tears too. Why don't any fall from my eyes? Why are they so dry?

Why am _I_ alone?

* * *

The rest of the day passes in an odd funk, like the world's colour was suddenly shut off. For a little while I follow Joker's example and while away my evenings as he does, imbibing copious amounts of alcohol. Chakwas eventually drags me out, but no amount of words or force short of breaking bones can move the bereaved pilot. I can't decide whether I hate him or not. Right now I don't even want to acknowledge the fact that he exists.

The next few days pass in identical fashion, just going through the motions. It's rare now that we get new patients in the hospital, and most of the work now is just maintenance for those who caught infections or have persistent problems. Routine. They don't need me anymore.

All around me, the world starts to reset. The Keepers go diligently about rebuilding the Citadel, even starting to patch up Tayseri Ward, and life moves on. I wonder if this isn't even the first time the Citadel has been so badly damaged, if even this is just normal and expected.

Saren and his Geth aren't the biggest story anymore, and despite all the devastation and ruin people go out of their way to never think about the battle. One of my patients had just arrived on the Citadel, and hadn't even experienced the chaos.

And to me, the world is grey.

Why am I allowed to live as if nothing has happened, when time continues to tick on?

"I guess it's time to find a new job," I mumbled to myself. Move on. Do something. I think Dr. Michel came by. I don't remember.

Liara enters the main room of my apartment quietly, her skin still flushed from fallen tears.

"I found something," she says. "I want to get her body back too," she says quietly. "Shepard… She deserves a proper burial."

Who cares about a body? Dead is dead. I grunt noncommittally, flicking my omnitool to the news to read the headlines.

My body goes cold, my mind blank. My hands tremble as they hold the display steady and frigid understanding dawns.

_Startling new evidence come to light_, it reads. _Negligence by the first human Spectre the cause of Tayseri Ward's destruction. Millions dead because of bad judgement and poor leadership._

On the front page of the newspaper. The government-owned newspaper. Endorsed by the Council. They're trying to place the blame for Tayseri Ward's destruction on Shepard? Why? The only thing that would ever accomplish is to destroy her name and break up the team. Demonize her. Because the Council has to be _blameless_ and _perfect_, doesn't it? If they weren't people might start thinking they're _mortal_. We can't have that, oh no.

I thought this was all over. We had her funeral, damn it. Shepard's team died with Shepard, and the world moved on without us. Are we just relics of the past now? Obsolete in a galaxy that never stops.

My job is done. The Reapers are known, the galaxy aware. It's irrelevant who finishes it from here. That is the way of the spy, the infiltrator.

So why do I feel this way?

I look again at the civilians who breathe because she bled. Even the pristine fucking whiteness of their shirts pisses me off.

I never wanted to be a hero. But I think I've performed well, even exceptionally, in my duties thus far.

All I want is for everything to be remembered as it was. As it is.

"Where are you going?" Liara asks, surprised as I rise from the couch, neatly store my omnitool away and arm myself carefully.

"To kill the Council," I respond neutrally, completely at ease. It's the only viable course of action, really. If I claim to have vital information from Shepard's mission, I'm sure I can get a face-to-face audience and they won't have repaired the chamber's anti-weapon systems yet. My first target will have to be Valern, I can drop him through his personal barrier with a few good shots, but it'll probably overheat my pistol. The Asari I can Reave and Burst, she's a career politician so her biotics are probably lacking. Then I can finish off the Turian with a Warp and punches if required. Anderson won't have moved in yet, so there's no need to hold back. Between my biotics, pistol and the element of surprise, I'm confident I can assassinate them all before I'm killed in reprisal. That's not a problem.

Deathsingers are never expected to survive their vengeance.

"Wha- you can't do that!" Liara exclaims, appalled and shocked, maybe wondering if I've snapped. Incidentally, she might just be correct. However, that's not a relevant line of inquiry at the moment, so I shelve it for later. Then I remember that there will not be a later, and so discard it entirely.

Wordlessly, I flick the extranet file from my tool to hers. She opens it and reads, her blue face paling as her eyes widen. Her own body starts to shake, and her hands clench tight enough to whiten her skin completely.

Then she sighs, almost deflating. "I know how you feel," she groans wretchedly, and I know she's telling the truth. "But I've got a lead. We could get her body back," she pleads, though I'm not sure if she wants to convince me or herself.

I inhale deeply, weighing the options. On one hand, vengeance and blood, the path of the deathsinger. On the other, a useless sentimental effort, likely to fail, for nothing but selfish self-gratification and a few words to an old man.

This world's fucked me over in more ways than I can name. It's time for a little selfishness.

"When do we leave?" I ask.

* * *

_**A/N: IMPORTANT NOTICE! If you haven't yet read my first fic 'The Transmigration Effect', I strongly advise that you read it before starting on this. Plus, I like The Transmigration Effect. So you should read it.**_

_**Well well well. It seems like such a long time ago that I promised this would come, and at the same time it feels like yesterday.**_

_**In any event, welcome to the first part of a The Reclamation Effect! As you might have guessed, the story will focus on the attempt to reclaim Shepard's body in the aftermath of the Normandy's destruction. On a more administrative level, the details of the story will be as follows; recluse and I will update this story fortnightly on Sundays. I might have preferred to update weekly, but now that we're married and both working hard for the future weekly just isn't possible, I'm afraid.**_

_**To everyone who has been patiently waiting for this since the end of The Transmigration Effect, thank you so much. I'm deeply humbled by your patience as much as I am by your desire to read what amounts to me just having fun at a keyboard. I hope you'll enjoy the rest of the story!**_


	2. Competence

_If you have a story make sure it's a complete one, with details close. It's the difference between a successful lie and getting caught._

* * *

_**The Reclamation Effect**_

_**Chapter One**_

* * *

_com·pe·tence (noun)_

_Having the necessary ability, knowledge, or skill to do something successfully._

* * *

"Omega. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy." I quote, distastefully flicking a mote of God-knows-what off my finger. "This is your lead."

Liara has the grace to look slightly embarrassed but she steels herself and nods.

I take a long look at the space around me, a place vastly different from anywhere I've ever had the displeasure to be. A dull red light permeates the massive city-asteroid, tinting everything the colour of dried blood. The ground is made of dull, dirty steel; originally grey now dyed a black-brown by uncountable layers of filth.

The two of us look identical to the other new arrivals, shabby clothes and shifty eyes. No, I take that back. Most of the people off our ship look tired and sick, but the two of us are at least hale. The humans have dark circles under their eyes; the Turians look thin and frail; Asari head crests droop; Salarians look slow and brittle. Most carry suitcases of some kind, we aren't any different in that respect. My bag is heavy, but Liara's nearly bends her over double. We look like refugees, just like the countless victims of Saren's attack on the Citadel.

Rubbish and debris sits in untidy piles in the corners and some of it looks years old. There's no sky, no view out to space, just more dirt and mess. Even the air seems tainted and I feel like I need a shower and an oxygen mask to avoid catching anything. Maybe it's because we're coming from the pristine Citadel, but everything of this place just makes me feel… unclean. Maybe I should have worn my armour instead of just carrying it around.

Sick or not, a lot of people are carrying some sort of weapon. Neither of us can use anything larger than a pistol competently, and there are so many people walking around armed we'd almost be in the minority if we weren't armed. Our guns look significantly better maintained most and I catch a few appraising glances being sent our way. I've never been in a place quite like this one. It has me on edge.

It's the sound, too. A constant wail of aircars and commerce and machinery and music and arguments and _people_. I consider myself a fairly simple person as far as my tastes go. I like peace and quiet, wide well-lit open spaces and only dealing with other people if I _absolutely_ have to. I am an introvert's introvert and I enjoy it. The moment I set eyes on Omega I know it's full of everything that annoys me to no end. Now that I'm here I find myself proven unilaterally correct. Wonderful.

Humanity calls it Omega, 'the end of all things'. To the Asari, it is 'the heart of evil'. To the Turians, 'the land without law'. To the Salarians, 'the place of secrets'.

Oh, and the Krogan call it 'the land of opportunity'. Fantastic.

"And who is this mysterious contact of yours?" I ask semi-sarcastically, curious to see how she responds.

"My family has been one of the Thirty Families of Thessia for a long time," she explains. "Over the course of the years my mother gathered some less than reputable employees. The report came from one of them."

'Employees'. As if anyone who worked with information trafficking on Omega actually worked for just one person. Except for Aria's underlings, potentially. I can't help but grimace. I haven't had many dealings with independents, but the impression I've gathered is that many of them are shrewd, cunning and only loyal to themselves.

So caution will be the watchword of the week. Considering that Shepard's team isn't exactly flavour of the month with the Council, they might not mind if we wind up on the wrong end of a knife.

Which brings me to another thing about Omega, the people. Intellectually I know that the vast majority of the space station's inhabitants are impoverished civilians but most of the people in the dock look like they'd stab you for looking at them the wrong way and be happy about it. It's a different set of rules from what I'm used to, that's for sure. Now all I have to do is figure out what the rules are before I antagonise someone enough that they try to kill me.

"How well do you know this contact?" I ask guardedly. I would have asked on the shuttle but there were too many people for me to talk openly. I doubt anyone there was even trying to overhear, but still. Old habits. I cast another look around to see if anyone's acting suspiciously.

After a few seconds, I decide to just look for anyone screaming and charging at us with a knife.

Stupid Omega.

Wearing armour would have attracted too much attention. Most of the people I can see are in threadbare clothes, gaunt-faced and thin. Others wear mismatched light plating, a lot of it chipped and cracked, probably of minimal use. Very few people have complete, functional suits and those that do are mercenaries or exclusively accompanied by flunkies. Even the few mercs are left alone, carefully watched and feared by the regulars.

Sure, this isn't an undercover thing or anything, there's no definable reason why attracting attention is a _bad_ thing. I just don't like people looking at me, thinking about me. I doubt many people here would care I was a part of Shepard's crew, even if they do recognize me. It's just that kind of place.

"Well then," I grimace. Might as well get this over with. I hate being dirty and as far as I'm concerned the less time we spend here the better. It wasn't that I wanted to go back and kill the Council, not at all. "Where are we going?"

Liara half-smiles hopefully. "I… am not sure?"

I really hate working with amateurs.

* * *

"Alright," I say, heaving the word out through a gargantuan sigh. "What's the guy's name?"

"Feron," Liara replies dutifully, by now suitably chastised. We've found a little hole-in-the-wall place to sit down, though I don't even bother looking at the menu. I have no desire to catch something.

"Species?" I ask. She flushes, looks at the ground. Wonderful. "And you don't know where to meet him because…?"

The archaeologist flinches a little in front of my gaze. "Well, the message I got from him said to meet in the usual place as per normal…" Standard procedure, you never mention the actual name of the meeting place over an unsecured line. "…But when I messaged back asking where to meet him he refused to name anywhere." Terrific. "So I tried to go through my mother's files to find where the usual place was, but many of the relevant directories were inaccessible."

"And you didn't tell me any of this?" I groan. Freaking amateurs. First Shepard and now Liara, can't I work with someone who doesn't need me to hold their hand?

The sheltered doctor blushes again. "I was confident I could break the encryption before we arrived. Don't you have people you could ask? I imagine an information trader would not make himself hard to find."

I give her a long look. "Of course I do." Not that I know any of them, but why do you need the touchy-feely emotional stuff when you can just pay them? "But everyone I might know to talk to would sell us out to the Shadow Broker and then it would be open season. Omega, remember? There's got to be fifty thousand assassins on this rock."

Maybe if I had some reputation of my own or friends who would avenge me, but with Shepard dead I'm a loose end swinging in the breeze. A loose end with a nice juicy bullseye on my back, to be precise.

"Oh." Liara responds. She obviously didn't consider that the Yahg and I are at odds. "Then what do we do?"

And now it's my problem. Of course it is. I'm amazed I still have hair. "Omega doesn't really have any laws, but it does have leadership, kind of. Aria would know every person of note on the station. Not that that's an option, because she runs her HQ out of a massive club called Afterlife."

My Asari companion tilts her head in confusion. "Why is it not an option?"

I grit my teeth and try to form the expression into a smile. I don't think it works. "Because it's a club. A big, noisy, busy club with hundreds of people every night. There are so many people that go through those doors it's impossible the Broker doesn't have his hooks in it. Even if Aria could somehow stop moles in her staff, the patrons are going to be leaking information all over the galaxy. Nothing secret happens in Afterlife. From there, see previous problem. Plus we don't have anything to trade and I imagine Aria's fees are more than we can pay."

Liara frowns at my blunt description of Omega's biggest nightclub. "That sounds like a very inefficient and hazardous way of running a regime."

"It is," I agree. Personally, I have no idea how Aria's managed to stay on top for so long but props to her. That's one woman I do not want to cross. "I assume _what_ Aria says to people isn't so public, but _who_ she sees is. She's almost like espionage Switzerland."

My companion's brow furrows in confusion. "Country on Earth," I elaborate quickly. "Famous for not taking sides ever and as a result being too useful for anyone to attack it. Basically, Aria must be insane to get her kicks playing chicken with everyone in the galaxy at once. Yes?"

At least it looks like she gets it now. Then she pauses, tilts her head. "Wouldn't the Shadow Broker be Switzerland?"

I shake my head. "Too ambitious. The Broker meddles in everything, asked for or not. Aria just reacts, most of the time. That's the important part. She knows everything about Omega and she's got no reason to care for our health."

My companion offers a small shrug. "I do not see any other option available to us."

That was the crux of it, wasn't it? There really is only one way to find Feron from the position we're in now, and it's at Afterlife. The only other option is to call the whole thing off but we're here now. I am not going to Omega and finding out just how crap it is so I can turn around and leave.

I sigh in resignation. "Fine. Let's go."

Now all I have to do is hope I don't get drawn any deeper into this web.

What was I thinking?

* * *

_The night before the funeral…_

The call comes in a few hours after midnight, interrupting my tossing and turning. I blearily look over at the clock. Three ten in the morning, according to the Citadel's day/night cycle. David Anderson is on the other end of the line.

"Tobias Parker?" He asks. He sounds haggard, worn out. Still, I recognise the voice. It figures he'd still be awake.

"Councilor," I answer. It's the first I've said to anyone since talking to Liara, and even to my own ears my voice sounds dead. Flat, emotionless.

"I'd… like to talk. Do you have a moment?"

What the hell. I'm not sleeping anyway. "Yeah. I'm on my way."

I knock briefly on the door to the new politician's residence and he lets me in without a word, a bottle of scotch held in one hand. I feel flat and tired and worn down but Anderson just looks like he's given up. The bottle in his hand isn't small and it's more than half empty. His collar and top button are undone, shirt marked with spilled alcohol.

Anderson's new penthouse is spartan but I suppose just having a new apartment when the rest of the Presidium was in shambles was impressive. It's not with the other councillor's apartments either, so it's probably a temporary lodging more than anything else.

"You ok?" I ask, more out of habit than anything else. Of course he's not. None of us are.

He shakes his head heavily, collapses back onto a couch that looks like it was pulled out of a fire. "She was like a daughter to me, you know." A wave of anger and pain hits me; I close my eyes and push it down. Shepard. It's always about Shepard. Who she was, where she came from, what she did. What she needed to do and what she failed miserably at.

I don't want to hear it. There's nothing for me to gain. All it does is hurt.

Anderson breaks off his soliloquy, takes a look at my face, and pours me a glass. "You look like you need it," he says, raising the glass to his lips. I'm amazed he's not on the ground, but whatever. I leave it alone. I've never really been one for drinking, just never got into it.

"Why me?" I ask. "Why ask for me?" Why not someone else in the military? Hackett? An old war buddy. Anyone should have been preferable to me. Leave me alone!

"Annie told me you did some strange things when you were with her," he says, eyes suddenly crystal-clear. "Things like working for the Shadow Broker and killing POWs. I don't think you had anything to do with what happened to her, or you wouldn't be on the Citadel. But you will tell me everything you know. Immediately."

So much for fucking secrecy. She couldn't even keep my dealings to herself, fucking hell. "What do you want to know, huh? You want to know how I did everything I could to stop the Reapers from tearing Shepard a new one? Because she was going to do the nice thing and extend a hand of peace and let them hack it off. You want me to apologise for going to the Broker to stop Cerberus when the Alliance dropped the ball? I'm sorry I hurt your _feelings_, Councilor. I'm sorry for you, because if she was like a daughter to you then you should have raised her to know that _a fucking queen doesn't trade herself for a single crippled pawn!_"

Silence reigns for what seems like an eternity. I came to my feet sometime during my outburst, though I can't pinpoint when. I grab the drink from the table and down it in one go. It burns. What do I care?

"So that's why Hackett got the tip from the Shadow Broker," Anderson says. "That was payment for your services."

I nod, jaw still set. "Yeah, that was me. I clued the Broker in on Saren's moves and motives, information straight from the field, unedited. In return, the Broker went through his connections and found the spy Cerberus had planted on the crew. Nothing more, nothing less. He probably thought we'd fail and die, and then the Broker would square things."

The former admiral squints at me. "Why would the Broker want Saren dead?"

"Saren subverted Fist, remember?" I point out. "If it can happen to one, it could happen to others. I doubt the best information dealer in the galaxy would look kindly on Saren poaching his people. All I did was make everyone happy and suddenly I'm a lynch target."

Earth's councillor nods slowly in understanding. He collapses back into the cushions, resting a hand over his eyes. "You said the Alliance dropped the ball?" He asks slowly.

I raise an eyebrow in disbelief. Surely he knows just how much damage Cerberus did to AONI. "Seriously? Half the galaxy knew just how badly you were infiltrated."

Anderson refills his glass, downs it in one practiced motion. "The Alliance Office of Naval Intelligence no longer exists," he states quietly. "My clearance level has gone up recently. When I found out just what had happened… I was shocked."

"What was it?" Ha. Even now, I just want to know things. Guess my personality can't be completely squashed after all.

"We thought Cerberus had seeded a few agents of theirs amongst our own people," Anderson explains, slurring his words slightly. "It happens in information-gathering groups, or so I'm told. But when Cerberus broke its cover and recalled its agents, seventy percent of all AONI agents vanished without a trace. All of the executive board, the chief of service. Almost all of the most senior agents. Cerberus didn't just grow within AONI. They killed it and wore its skin as a disguise."

Bleeding hell. Talk about disasters. The revelation cuts through the growing anger and tension in my body, spilling over me like a waterfall. "Grow within? You think Cerberus was a splinter group of your intelligence agency?" Anderson nods. Dear lord. They got played so hard they don't even know what the rules are, even now.

The worst part is we _need_ the Alliance. We need the whole galaxy. "Let me clear a few things up for you, ok? First, Cerberus is not and never was a splinter group of your intel division. Cerberus is and always has been a human-supremacist paramilitary organization that was founded immediately after the First Contact War. They didn't 'grow inside' AONI, they straight-up infiltrated it and turned most of your people. In fact, you should have been prepared after the SSV Geneva was targeted by thieves in 2165; they named their sponsor as 'Cerberus'. The fact that you still have no idea about them just means that they were pulling all the intelligence strings for at least that long. Yes?"

Anderson just stares at me. "But that… you... How do you know that?"

I stare back in disbelief. I thought the Illusive Man was giving the Alliance the runaround, but I never thought it was this bad. "The Alliance is the only one in denial about all this. I mean, they wrote a freaking _manifesto_. And _published_ it. You can't _get_ much more open than that. Cerberus' origins are almost public knowledge by now." I spread my hands, still amazed at Anderson's, and by extension the Alliance's, ignorance. "Unfortunately, after that lapse and since 2170 or so, Cerberus clamped down. Nobody knows who leads them, where he is, or what they're up to."

"I'll have to speak to the Council," Anderson starts. I have to fight down the urge to punch him.

I can feel the pure frustration in my voice. I feel like I'm beating my head against a freaking wall here. "Have you even been listening? They know already. They thought you knew!" Now I'm shouting, frustration and anger finally spilling over. "Everyone thinks you know because there's no way in hell you could have actually been that fucking dense!"

I'm pissed off. I'm royally pissed off. This shouldn't have happened! Nothing is going right!

I slam my fist onto the table, staring at the crack I just made. Anderson flinches in surprise. "Why is everything I try useless?! Shit! The Broker, Cerberus, the Reapers, and now Shepard's gone too! Everything's worse than ever!"

"What do you mean?" Anderson asks, leaning in slowly.

"Cerberus," I sigh, falling back into the chair. Suddenly it's hilarious. It's just too fucking funny. "Going to the Broker, fishing out the mole, all that risk I took, all the goodwill I squandered, you know what it was worth in the end?"

"What?" He asks. As if he doesn't know. Ha-de-fucking-ha.

"Nothing! Absolutely, completely _nothing_. I screwed up. I overestimated the threat. I paid at a premium to remove something that _wasn't even that dangerous_ and now I'm paying for it. I could have avoided all of it."

Really, what would have happened if I'd let Pressley do his thing? He would have reported to the Illusive Man, whoop-de-fucking-do. Hell, he might have even had a change of heart and come to like nonhumans. All I did with my witch hunt was force him into a corner and make him even more bitter, more determined. It's just too funny. I know everyone thinks I'm some massive security threat, some big leak that needs to be plugged. I'm a screw-up. A failure. A reject so useless he can't even _die_ properly.

Wave after wave of self-loathing washes over me, stronger than ever before. Reject. Idiot. Fool. Lazy, incompetent, useless. And I was _trusted_ with something? Whoever brought me to this universe was mistaken.

Oh, I don't hate myself. Hate is too weak a term.

Unintentionally, I speak one of the thoughts ripping my head apart. "If I can't handle this, how am I supposed to handle the Reapers?"

"You mean that thing that worked with the Geth? The super-dreadnought?"

I look forlornly at him. "Yes. That. There will be more. A lot more, I think. Nazara's whole goal was to summon the rest of them back from dark space. Now they have to take the long way but they'll get here sooner or later."

I can see the military man trying to put that into a context he's more familiar with. If one Reaper could take on multiple fleets and make them work for a victory, what could a dozen of them do? Let alone a hundred.

Finally, he shakes his head. "If it were anyone else, I'd have called them deluded. But Shepard believed it, didn't she? We'll need to step up our production and research."

Again, a long silence reigns over the room, while I wonder if cutting my throat would kill me or just force me to be reborn.

The only thing stopping me from planning suicide is fear of living. Isn't that funny?

I'm not laughing.

"I'm going after her body after the funeral," Anderson says quietly.

"The fuck you are," I suddenly snarl at him. He blinks at my words, probably wondering how I can say that to the Councilor of Earth. "You're staying on that comfy-ass seat whether you like it or not, because if you quit then Udina takes over the job and if Shepard did one thing right it was put you in that chair. _I'll_ go after her, and I promise you I will find those responsible and personally send them to the ninth circle of hell for all eternity."

His eyes blaze at that, and his face sets in a hard line. "I like the sound of that. But that's something I'll do with my own hands. Why should it be you?"

I wonder for a second how best to answer. "How much do you know about what happened on Noveria?"

"Nothing from the official report. But Shepard mentioned in a personal call that you had been grievously wounded and had made a miraculous recovery. Is that what you're referring to?"

So he knows at least part. That would do. "I was fatally wounded by Matriarch Benezia when we fought her and her bodyguard. The last Rachni Queen was witness to the fight. Rachni have incredible regenerative abilities, and the Queen offered to restore me if Shepard would free her. Thanks to that, I survived. The process had a few side-effects but in this case the most important one was psychological dependence on a Queen-figure. Shepard."

Talking that logically, that rationally was almost impossible. Divorcing myself from the situation, usually so simple for me, was an exercise in futility. My Queen was gone. Why should I not turn the galaxy to ash and die? What was left for me and my kind?

"You… depended on her?"

"Too weak a term. After that, she wasn't a commanding officer to half of me. She was royalty. Absolute majesty."

"And now?" he asks warily.

"I'm going to destroy something," I acknowledge, feeling that pent-up destruction ceaselessly building. Slowly, but never abating. It's just a matter of time. In the end, it will most likely be myself. "I'd rather it be the ones responsible for her death."

Anderson closes his eyes. Now he just looks tired. "Very well. You're right. I have things I need to do here," he says. "You go. On one condition: you report to me. Is that understood?"

"Perfectly," I agree. Whether or not I mean it, even I don't know.

* * *

Omega is a big place, but it's also small. It's big because there are a million and one uninhabited twisty little paths worn through the hollowed-out asteroid to get you lost until you starve to death, each older and stranger than the last. It's small because for all the people eking out existences in it, the entire station is less than fifty kilometres long. It would take you a week or so but you could conceivably walk from one end of Omega to the other.

Most of the spaceports are around the centre of the station, like the rest of the infrastructure. Afterlife follows the trend but unlike other districts in the station it also has no competition. There aren't any other clubs near Afterlife simply because Aria doesn't allow it, apparently.

Liara and I join the line of bored people from all races waiting to enter. An Elcor at the head of the queue looks to be the bouncer and a Krogan with a riot shotgun watches the crowd from the top of the stairs.

"How long will it take us to get in?" Liara asks quietly.

"How should I know?" I whisper back. "I've never been in a club before." Unless you counted the one time at Flux, but to be honest I didn't enjoy that at all. There was that time with Chora's Den back on the Citadel, too. I don't think that counted though because that was just a firefight.

One patron makes it clear of the line and the doors of the club open momentarily, just long enough for him to slip inside. It was only for a second, but the music of the club, which appears to be sex noises over a bass line, hits me in the face like a wet fish. I just know I'm going to have a headache by the time this is over. It's official. I hate clubs.

Despite all my griping, the line keeps moving forward until we reach the Elcor bouncer. For a long second I look at him and he looks at me. What am I supposed to do? Is there a door tax or something? I knew I should have figured out how the nightlife worked.

Well, I certainly have no idea what to do. And like hell I'm going to make an ass out of myself saying the wrong thing. So I'll wait for him to speak first.

For future reference, never get into a patience battle with an Elcor.

By now, the people in the line behind me were starting to get antsy. I hear Liara sigh behind me and lean heavily on my shoulder. She flips a credit chip at the Elcor, speaking in a breathy falsetto. "You'll have to excuse my associate; he's a mute you see. Now, can we please go inside?" She winks at him and the Elcor's eyes flick to the side to check the sum on the chip.

The big alien snorts and takes a half-step to the side, allowing us forward. The thumping of the music only gets more and more invasive the closer we get to the door and as the portal slides open a wave of smells hits me. Dried sweat, alcohol, vomit. The scents assault my nose; the heat is stifling. The sound is equally abrasive, a constant pounding so loud I can barely hear myself think and I certainly can't hear myself speak. The light flickers to the dance of holographic flames and a garish advertising tube displaying provocative Asari dancers is almost blinding to look at directly.

People do this for _fun_? Good grief. I thought _I_ was the crazy one.

"Where's Aria?" Liara shouts over the roar of the club. I barely hear her. This place must be murder on eardrums. Don't people care they'll go deaf?

I point up through the haze of smoke and who knows what else. There's only one booth thing looking out onto the floor, and everything I've heard about Aria T'Loak suggests she's fond of drama and potentially megalomania. If anyone's going to have their own private area overlooking everyone else, it's her. "Probably up there," I shout back.

"Nobody just goes to see Aria," a dry, rasping voice comments. Not a loud voice, either. But it's distinctive enough to be heard despite the pounding music and I try to squint through the darkness to see the speaker. This place would seriously be the perfect place for an assassination. Sudden disorientation to the eyes, ears and nose, so many people that you could never keep track of all of them at once and Omega's gun control is nonexistent.

"Sit down." This time, I catch the speaker. A Drell, a rarity in Citadel space. I've only seen a few in my life, but this one isn't an exception to the picture I've formed. A touch shorter than the human average, tan scaly skin and large black eyes. Those eyes gaze intently at Liara and me, but not maliciously. Just genuine interest. "Have a drink."

I sit. There isn't really a reason to hurry, and besides, my ears are killing me. Liara catches on a second later and hesitantly stands behind me. "I'd prefer to start with names," I hedge, still watching the drink the Drell offers.

The Omegan smiles placidly. Or maybe it's just how Drell smile. I'm at a bit of a disadvantage, not knowing how to interpret their facial expressions. "As you wish. Feron, though you knew that already."

I didn't, though Liara should have. This is our informant, then, and apparently Afterlife was the assigned meeting place. Part of me thinks it's too convenient, but I can't really think of another place to meet without worrying about ambushes. Afterlife at least is policed by Aria, so it's effectively neutral. Unless you start something, I guess.

"Parker," I reply. Liara introduces herself as well.

The pounding of the club makes it impossible to overhear; the Drell continues with a small smile. "I suppose we should start proceedings, then. How can I be assured of payment?"

Liara starts to speak but I shoot her a glance and she subsides. There are a thousand reasons that I should handle this, especially if Liara's trying to play a stupidly rich Asari heiress.

"I'm sure you know of Matriarch Benezia's death, and that Liara is her sole heir to the entire T'Soni estate. You'll get your money." I'll leave it unsaid that the entire T'Soni estate is virtually nothing, thanks to Benezia squandering it all on Saren's biotic Geth project.

Feron smiles coldly.

"Perhaps. But if that were the case, surely you would have recognised me on sight… or at least known where to find me." Crap, he noticed. Well, we didn't handle it well at all. Stupid clubs. "If she can't access Benezia's files, what's to say she can access the money?"

Fair point, and unnervingly true. "You'll get paid," I assure him. Even if it's a lie, we need the information Feron has or this trip will be worthless.

"I should tell you before we start that if you don't pay me I'm required to make sure you die. Nothing personal but if I can't collect on my debts then I'm not very good at my job. But since I've worked with the T'Soni family for a while, I'll accept payment after the job's done. Those are the terms. Agreed?"

I glance at Liara, whose lips are pressed together in trepidation. But she nods and I turn back to the mercenary. "Done. What do you know about the body?"

The Drell's attitude changes, going from casual to professional in a heartbeat. "Not here. It's safe, but too many people could listen. You have your equipment?"

I heft the bag I've been carrying over my shoulder since we got off the shuttle. Liara has hers, though it's not as big as mine. "Everything we need."

"You may wish to get changed. I assure you, such attire will be unremarkable. Follow me."

Feron leads us to a smaller, enclosed space, not sectioned off but out of the way enough that it has a modicum of calm. The Drell shields us from the movements of the crowd while the two of us empty our packs.

On a normal trip you might pack something like changes of clothes, books, things to entertain yourself or pass the time. On this trip, the two of us packed something more practical. Silently the two of us take pieces of armour plating from our bags, fixing them securely to our bodies. I can't say for Liara, but after the Battle of the Citadel my armour was wrecked. The Geth's ambush in the Council Chambers literally crushed my armour, leaving the more important pieces of it warped and useless and the rest cracked and broken.

So when I was looking at getting a replacement suit I allowed myself to, just once, use my status as Shepard's crewmate to my advantage. Finding an armourer to supply me with new equipment for free was simple and getting it made to my specifications wasn't much harder. So long as I'm careful not to break the last thing in my bag, everything is perfect.

Unlike the armour I was using at the end of the battle against Saren my new hardsuit is lighter, sacrificing some protective power for greater flexibility and agility. It's also portable, which was the deciding factor behind my choice. Liara's armour is the same, lighter plating designed for skirmishing instead of heavy fighting.

As far as colour, Liara's armour is the same sky-blue but the material is finer, the workmanship obviously high quality. My own armour is similar, but coloured a navy blue so dark it's virtually black. Moving through the crowd is much easier with the added bulk of the armour, though the intimidation factor probably helps too. At least with a proper magnetic clip I don't need to worry about someone stealing my pistol as I walk past.

I hesitate a second, wondering if this whole thing is a trap. Maybe it's just Omega and maybe it's the oppressive feeling of Afterlife, but I'm even more paranoid than usual. Well, no risk no reward. I follow the Drell out of the club, happy to leave the booming music behind.

"We're being followed," Liara notes tensely after a few minutes walking, while a tight-lipped Feron just nods. Is he in on it?

"They must be locals," the Drell whispers. "Most would be lost in the maze of pathways," I can see what he means; without a guide there's no way I could make my way through the labyrinthine passages without stopping to check the map every five seconds. Plus sound gets bounced every which way, making it virtually impossible to use it to pursue a target.

A shadow falls over the dirty steel and we come to a stop. "More ahead," I grunt. Surrounded. Wonderful. A firefight in these narrow passageways with no cover and enemies both in front and behind is a recipe for disaster. I clench my teeth. Whoever set this trap up, they know their ambushes.

Our pursuers are all humans, three in front and three behind. All wear various styles of cast-off and second-hand clothing, mismatched in the style of long-term Omega survivors. All of them carry guns, rifles and pistols seemingly at random. Their weapons are battered and stained, haphazardly patched together, so dented that I wasn't even sure they'd fire. Even if they did manage it, I'd give equal odds of the gun going up in a ball of fire as the heat sink fails.

"That's some nice equipment," the leader says, one of the three that had been lying in wait. For now their guns are pointing to the sides, that could change in a heartbeat. Despite the quality of their weapons, I'm not too fond of our chances if the bullets begin to fly. The corridor is dark and barely lit; most of my body was in shadow. I begin to inch my hand toward my pistol; from this distance even I won't miss.

"Don't," Feron says softly. I shoot him a look, clenching my hand in anger. These vagrants are wasting our time. We should just kill them and move on…

I catch myself as my thoughts begin to run. Kill someone for the grievous wrong of holding us up for a few minutes? That's a Rachni impulse.

"I will handle this," our guide says in that quiet, firm tone. Liara steps up beside me, hand near her own weapon, trying to watch the front and rear at the same time. She looks as tense as I am and we quietly turn to face both groups of ambushers.

"You like our equipment?" Feron enquires calmly, this time loud enough to be heard.

"You should leave your guns and armour," the leader says tightly, motioning to the floor with the tip of his gun. "Continue on without them."

"You make no sense," Feron continues, still speaking politely. "If you desire our weapons and armour, you imply that our combat strength is greater than yours. If we were to fight, you would lose. You see?"

"There are more of us than you, Drell," the leader whispers, eyes wide. His knuckles whiten with the force of his grip, and suddenly I see what Feron is trying to do. These people aren't soldiers, aren't mercenaries. For once in my life, the person holding a gun on me hasn't trained how to use it, or how to deal with death. This is the vaunted terrifying occupants of Omega?

"There are more of us than you, and we're ready to die," the leader repeats, louder this time. "Are you?" Even with my Rachni-altered perception, a shiver runs down my body. I was wrong. I didn't understand. The scary thing about these people isn't their equipment or their training, it's their mindset. They move as one group, one organism. They must depend on each other and nothing else for everything in their life. Our equipment will increase the chances of survival for the whole group and none of them would hesitate to throw away their life if they could win.

It's almost Geth-like, in a way. In organics, it's just scary. People don't just throw away their lives like this.

No. I lie. I almost did the very same thing with Udina. Irony at its finest.

"You didn't attack us from ambush," Feron points out. "You hope to end this without bloodshed."

The leader of the thieves doesn't reply.

"It's most considerate of you to offer this chance," Feron says. To my astonishment he actually sounds genuine. Considerate? This group? The Drell must be a much more competent liar than I thought, or he's insane. "You have shown us honour by not attacking. I thank you."

"The guns," the thug says warily, thrown off by Feron's politeness.

"We cannot give them to you," the Drell responds. Good. For a second I thought he was going to capitulate. "We have need of them. Regardless, if we were to give them to you, it would go poorly for your people. Others would see them and desire to take them, much as you do now."

The leader takes an awkward half step, checking behind him. "That's not for you to decide. The guns. Now."

"Aria will be most displeased," Feron says and the leader stiffens immediately, sudden fear in his eyes. Even though we're no longer in Afterlife, we're still in Aria's district and thus under her aegis. Not that she would care about us personally, but they don't know that.

Even so, the human doesn't back down, just levels his aim as best he can at the Drell's chest. The effect is somewhat spoiled by his trembling and he licks his lips nervously. "You can't tell her if you're dead."

Shit. If Feron's bluff was designed to force them to back down, it's failing miserably.

"In recognition of the consideration you have shown us," Feron continues, only the barest hint of tension in his voice, "I propose a compromise." The Drell reaches into his coat and withdraws a pistol, identical to his holstered weapon. My eye twitches; that draw was so fast I couldn't follow it. "I shall leave you this weapon as a gift. In addition, I shall see you are rewarded with additional weapons at a later date."

The thug's eyes twitch to the side, flicking to his friends. On his decision they would live or fight and die and this isn't something that can be postponed. I was fairly certain what he would choose, though. Groups like this died when people like Aria became even slightly annoyed and there wasn't anybody to speak for them at that level.

"Your word?" the leader asks sharply. Feron bows his head in confirmation. The human swallows as if taking bitter medicine, a look of confusion on his face. "All right. Deal."

The human leader steps forward, hand out in the human symbol of a pact sealed. Feron clasps his hand with a smile, showing him his omnitool screen. The human's eyes go wide and I manage to snatch a glimpse of the screen. I don't even know if these people know how to use two dozen Mattocks.

The human looks up at Liara's contact with an expression akin to awe; Feron smiles politely. "My name is Feron. I trust you will be able to repay the debt in time?" The human nods nervously. "Excellent," the information broker finishes.

And with that, we just… leave. And nobody stops us.

"Are you insane?" Liara hisses. "You let them point a gun at your heart!"

"Bulletproof lining in the coat," I guess. "Probably only good for very small calibres though. Kinetic barrier too?"

"Parker is correct," Feron comments dryly. "There is a small kinetic shield generator sewn into the back of my coat. The rest of it is indeed lined with anti-ballistic fibres to stop any round that penetrates the shield. I have found it to be effective thus far."

"That's not a reason to let someone _shoot you_!" Liara exclaims, still visibly distressed.

"They had no intention of killing me, and my preparations prevented a luck-based killing," the Drell reasons. "This defused the situation without unnecessary death. Is it not the best solution?"

"And you have people who owe you a favour, people who can move quietly and see a lot more than they say, now heavily armed and most likely extremely loyal." I point out. Feron just smiles. For an information dealer like him, favours are hard currency. He's dangerous.

He takes us to a derelict alleyway, wide, empty and dirty. There are buildings on every side but it doesn't look like anybody has lived here in quite some time. Broken glass and litter cover the steel walkway, crunching softly under our boots. A good place for a quiet meeting. Or an ambush.

"So," Feron begins. "The corpse of the heroic Commander Shepard. It's the strangest things that get attention but that's not my place to judge. The Normandy was shot down in the Amada system of the Omega nebula, quite close to here. Most of the wreckage landed on the planet Alchera but many pieces of the ship were left to drift. One of them was the object of your interest."

Liara crosses her arms in irritation. So much for playing the idiot heiress. "I was there, Feron. I know where we were when those ships attacked. We want to know where it is now."

Feron smiled. "The body was initially claimed by Vorcha scavengers. They had no use for it, so they sold it for a pittance, apparently. You should be thankful that she was frozen by space; they might have eaten her otherwise. Shortly afterwards the corpse was 'acquired' by the Eclipse and its previous owners killed. My informant in the company has notified me that in a short period of time, the Eclipse will be selling the body to the Shadow Broker for a rather exorbitant fee. Is that sufficient?"

I trade a look with Liara. That's better than I'd hoped for, honestly. But that also means that by trying to reclaim the body, we'll be pissing off both the Eclipse, one of the biggest mercenary groups in the galaxy, and the Shadow Broker yet again. Well, I don't suppose he can get any more pissed.

"I have a question," A very important question, actually. Feron glances at me curiously, a trace of a smile on his lips.

"Please, ask."

"Why not side with the Broker?" I ask guardedly. The whole attempted mugging in the alley was convincing, but I need a guarantee. "I'm sure he'd be appreciative; he'd probably even pay you for this information. Why come to us?"

The Drell smiles lazily. "I happen to be quite avaricious," he states simply. "I want more than the pittance the Broker would shell out. I thought Liara T'Soni would be interested, so here we are. Are there any further questions?"

Well, greed works better as a motivation than just about anything else. On Omega, that's probably truer than ever. Fine, I'll trust him. Cautiously.

"When is the handover?" Liara asks. "And where?"

Again, the Drell smiles. I wonder what he's really feeling. "When and where the handover will be, I'm afraid my contact wasn't advised. However, I do know where the Eclipse is keeping the object for the moment. It's a few hundred levels up, one district over. Assuming we move quickly, we should be able to avoid the Broker's attention."

Almost on cue, my omnitool pings with a message. Only nine words, but they chill like vacuum.

**_Hello, Operative Shinga. I have an assignment for you._**

* * *

_A/N: Woohoo, we're on schedule! Mostly. Well, it went up before midnight, it's technically fine! So there. _

_In other news, Recluse is wonderful. I kind of gave her no time to edit this, and she still managed it amazingly. So, she's absolutely amazing and I'm not afraid to admit that without her, this story probably wouldn't exist._

_On a more plot-related note, the Broker is back! and we're on Omega! And Feron's here! Basically, stuff will start to happen as soon as next chapter. I don't anticipate having a long start-up process for this particular story, I'm going for a more punchy, fast-paced story this time. Whether that'll come thrugh or not, you be the judge. Let me know what you think, drop me a line, review or PM or something. I like knowing what people think! _

_Until next time, you stay classy._


	3. Alliance

_You do your bit, and then you pretend to be scenery. You sit and sweat and hope the people who get paid to go out and do the work don't foul everything up. The waiting will give you a stomach-ache, but that's what agents do._

* * *

_**The Reclamation Effect**_

_**Chapter Two**_

* * *

_al·li·ance (noun)_

_A connection based on kinship, marriage, or common interest; a bond or tie._

* * *

'Shinga'. Only one person has ever called me that. It's not something I want to revisit.

I mutter a chain of expletives under my breath. Everything was going so well, it just had to happen. Damnit, shit, this was supposed to be a simple job. Find the body. Steal the body. Leave. Now it's freaking complicated and that's BAD - all caps intended.

It's bad for all kinds of reasons but chiefly this: How do you steal from someone who knows you're coming?

I curse again as the message repeats itself. How did he even know my address?

"I need to take this," I growl, taking a step away from the group. If we're about to get ambushed, I'd prefer to be spread out.

"What do you want?" I snap once I'm away, not bothering to hide the anger in my voice. "I thought we were done."

The distorted voice hisses quietly through my helmet, the words for me alone. "Surely you understand why I sanctioned your death, Operative Shinga. Notifying Commander Shepard was a clear breach of our agreement. I must discourage such wilfulness. But you have survived and may yet be of some use. I will make you an offer, Mr. Parker. In exchange for my favour and a prestigious place in my organization, all you must do is shoot Mr. Feron and Miss T'Soni."

I stop. That certainly wasn't what I was expecting. Then again, I don't think I knew what to expect. I was fairly certain I could do it, too; neither Feron nor Liara would suspect me and drawing a weapon on Omega is never as threatening as it normally is…

Then I realise I'm actually considering it and thrust the thought from my mind. Like hell. Odds are he's not even good for his word and he'll kill me along with everyone else. No loose ends.

So I turn back to my omnitool, whisper harshly into it. "Not a fucking chance."

A faintly reptilian growl is my only response. I shut down the channel and turn back to the other two, forgoing walking pace for a dead sprint. "We need to go. This place isn't safe-"

Feron moves suddenly, hooking one of Liara's legs and twisting, violently throwing her to the ground, throwing himself on top of her. The harsh crack of a sniper round echoes through the derelict alley a split-second later and the Drell grunts in discomfort, one arm going to his side.

Some unknown instinct screams at me; I leap forward into a diving roll in response. A second bullet tears chunks from the steel plating of the ground a yard away, passing through the space my head occupied only a second ago. Definitely snipers. A regular rifle wouldn't have that much power behind one shot. Not good. There isn't much cover in the open street and I'm not confident that my barrier can handle a full-strength shot. I'm not in any hurry to test it, either.

"Feron!" I call, watching Liara drag the Drell into the shadow of an old apartment complex. I follow them in through a shattered window, the frame worn smooth by time. The place we find ourselves in looks like an old, broken down atrium, as nice as you could find on Omega. It's not exactly shelter but it gets us out of sight for a few seconds. The three of us hunker down behind the receptionist's desk, a solid old construction plated in tempered steel. It's not out of sight but it's the only place close enough to be useful. Sure enough, another shot tears chunks from the floor beside the desk, sending tiny shrapnel ricocheting off my barrier.

"Did you see where they're shooting from?" I ask. Liara shakes her head but Feron nods and cradles his arm, dark blood seeping from a long piece of jagged metal in his side.

"Yes. They're on top of one of the old factories, about two blocks south. Two snipers. I couldn't see their race or insignia."

Liara seems to have recovered her wind; her eyes now sharp as razors. It feels like forever ago that we picked her up in the Normandy, wide eyed and idealistic. Not anymore.

"How sure are you on numbers?" She asks, rolling her head up above the dilapidated counter to check the empty street.

"Eighty percent?" Feron grunts, bracing himself for a second before ripping the shrapnel out of his torso. The wound starts bleeding again almost immediately but an application of medi-gel seals the wound just as fast.

"How bad is it?" I ask. The piece of metal is of considerable size, most of it is dyed by his blood. If he were on the Citadel, he'd be in hospital and probably confined to bed. But he's on Omega. So he's fighting.

What a messed-up place.

"I've been better," he admits cheerfully. Seriously, what the fuck does it take to get this guy down? The Drell reaches into his pocket, producing a pair of binoculars. "I've also been worse. It's an interesting handicap."

A handicap. He considers being impaled by a shard of rusty metal nearly half a foot long to be a _handicap_? I know marines that would be screaming in agony, even with med-gel.

Another shot slams into the wall of the atrium, a metre or two above our heads.

"What do we do?" Liara asks.

"Assuming I can have a second to sight on him, I am confident we can kill him," the Drell theorises. I miss Shepard. I know it's unfair to compare her to ordinary people but if it were her then our attacker would already be dead. "Which may be slightly difficult, because no professional group on Omega would attempt an assassination with only snipers."

Liara frowns. "I don't think its uncommon elsewhere. Why is it different here?"

Another sniper shot slams into the wall less than a foot above our heads. "Can we please focus on the more pressing matter?" I snap angrily. "Theorycrafting can wait."

Good god, they're going on like a bunch of housewives. You're in combat, idiots. Act like it.

"Expect incoming infantry," Feron summarises.

Fuck. Pinned down by sniper fire, unable to retaliate, apparently with clean-up forces moving in. Then again, when have I ever been in an advantageous position? Virtually never. From the moment I ever first fought, in Chloe Michel's clinic, it seems I've been the underdog. From Therum to Feros to Noveria, Ilos and the Presidium itself I've always scrambled and struggled to win.

A round from the hidden snipers chooses that moment to punch through the steel-plated counter, drilling right through our cover and ricocheting off my barrier. The warm, protective feeling of my barrier vanishes instantly and the bullet deflects into the ground.

Without the desk's steel plating, I'd be dead, barrier or no. Well. That answers that question.

Feron snaps up immediately, eye glued to binoculars. If it's a bolt-action rifle, he'll have a second to find the targets. If not, well, I hope that shield of his is high quality.

"I recognise the gun," Feron announces happily, dropping back down as another round punches into the wall above his head. "Mantis rifles with tripods for extra stability. That suggests our assailants are of the Blue Suns."

Wonderful. No wonder the shot had so much power. That sniper bastard must be using one of those new heat-sink weapons. "With that much power, it has to be a thermal clip weapon," I grunt. How the hell did some Blue Sun on Omega get his hands on a gun like that?

"A what?" Liara asks, confused. I growl. Mother-fucking-shit-ass-bitch _amateurs_.

"New technology derived from Saren's Geth. Remove the cooling systems from a gun, devote the extra room to additional accelerators and increase the round's power. Disposable heat sinks contain the discharge heat, then you just eject and replace to keep firing. Means you have to carry the sinks around but it's much more dangerous. On the other hand, you never have to wait for your weapon to vent so long as you have a clip."

Really, with the state of weapon and shielding technology at the end of the battle against Sovereign, it was almost stupidly hard to kill something. You needed at least three or four shots even with a good gun to get through someone's shields, even Shepard had trouble getting consistent one-shot kills with the biggest gun she could carry.

Not that we ever had the same advantages, because the Geth invented the damn sinks.

"You're well informed," Feron acknowledges. "But fear not. This is also a heat-sink weapon." He gestures to his pistol, my eyes immediately narrow in envy. Damn it, not even _I_ got one of those guns. Was it too much to ask? None of the regular gun merchants on the Citadel had any, they were military-exclusives for now. I'd thought my celebrity status counted for something but they still wanted to know what I would use it for. Apparently 'shooting spree in the Council Chambers' wasn't a good enough reason. Bastards.

"How did you get your hands on one of those?" I hiss, simultaneously jealous, irritated and a little sulky.

"Mr. Parker. Tobias. This is Omega," he explains proudly. "If it exists, it is traded here. There is not a military logistics specialist who is immune to the lure of easy credits."

Well. When you put it like that. Funny thing though; if a single gun in a shipment of twenty thousand goes missing, it's theft. Theft and a lucky Tobias Parkerwho has a fan among the marines pulling guard duty. But no, if the entire shipment of twenty thousand vanishes, it's a clerical error.

Fucking bureaucracy.

"How do you propose we distract the snipers?" I ask guardedly, uncomfortably aware of the practice of 'bait and shoot' in these kind of scenarios.

"I don't suppose we have any smoke grenades," Feron enquires hopefully.

"Do I look like a vanguard to you?" I shoot back sarcastically. "She's an archaeologist, I'm a medic. No, we don't have any grenades."

Feron's face falls ever so slightly. If I fortify my barrier to the utmost, then use Barrier Gift, maybe someone can survive taking a shot. If Feron's own weapon has thermal clips then it should be able to punch through the enemy sniper's shields even at this range. Assuming he can hit.

"Alright," I say, gritting my teeth. I hate leaving myself unprotected in the midst of battle but it has to be done. "I'll give you my barrier, it should let you survive at least one shot. In that time, you'll have to kill at least one of them."

The Drell smiles. "Excellent. Let's beg-"

More gunfire hammers into the front of the old apartment building, sending lethal shards of synthetic glass flying into the ruined atrium. Most of them shatter against the walls, covering the bullets that hammer against our cover. I force my barrier to full strength and peek out, catching a glimpse of a team of Blue Suns troopers picking their way across the uneven ground.

"Five more incoming, thirty metres and closing. Doesn't look like they're heat-sink equipped or we'd already be dead." One thing's for sure, cover's going to have to be a lot stronger in the future with the added power behind gunfire.

"How bunched up are they?" Liara asks, biting her lip. Now that I've tagged them, I can see them on my radar without looking. With a flick of my fingers I transfer the data to Liara and Feron.

"Three in the centre, one on each flank. Even the ones in the centre are too spread out to catch, though." They've obviously been trained to fight biotics. Any closer and they'd risk getting caught in a lift field all together. Two of them, maybe, but then you're exposed to the rest.

Liara flexes her fingers, a small smile on her face. "Don't underestimate me," she warns, a blue glow lighting up her hands. A blue comet erupts from her fingertips, winging towards the mercenaries. They scatter further at the sight of it, though they only manage a few steps before the homing projectile catches them. Liara's biotics blossom into a dark Singularity, a vortex of gravity with a wider area than anything I'd seen before. All three mercenaries stagger and stumble in the gravatic grip of the miniature black hole, in seconds brought from a full sprint to useless panicked flailing in the air.

Liara drops back behind cover with a satisfied smirk on her face, while Feron takes her place and drills a round through one of the helpless Sun's faceplates.

"Damn, Liara," I whistle appreciatively. I know I couldn't do that, even if I'm finally starting to get my new biotics figured out. Still, no way I'm going to let her show me up. My own green power flares to life, grabbing one of the two mercenaries on the edge of the Singularity. Liara's ultra-wide construct couldn't quite snare them but even so it made them stumble. Easy prey. Instead of pulling him towards us, I jerk him hard to the right, further from his friends.

A good thing I'd kept my head and gone against habit, too. The Blue Suns mercenary takes a sniper round to the back of the chest, neatly blocking the round aimed at me. The heat-sink enhanced round punches cleanly through shields and armour, spattering the ground with arterial spray. The blood spatters across the ground, one droplet even striking my faceplate. The coppery smell blood invades my nose and suddenly all I want is to fight-erase-kill. I sing in triumph, what would have been a simple surge of pride in my skill elevated to a bestial joy at causing the death of another living being.

There's no time to consider what that means, what it says about me. There's only enough time to raise my pistol and fire at the last unimpeded mercenary until my gun overheats and when the Turian is still standing at the end of the barrage, seemingly untouched by my fusillade, I vault the counter and sprint towards him, colouring the air with my song as green life-power-biotics swirls around my fists. The Blue Sun raises his rifle and lets off one accurate burst, the heavy bullets striking my barrier inches away from my forehead. My biotics deflect the screaming metal, the force of the lead forcing my head hard to one side. Still, a touch of whiplash can't stop my fists.

My first strike hits the metallic alien in the chest, caving his armour in from neck to navel. That alone probably kills him but I don't want to stop. To stop is to be unsure, to leave possibility of revenge. To ensure complete victory-safety-future you have to erase-cleanse-devour everything that they ever were. My second strike caves in the unmoving Turian's helmet, crushing it completely. My third rips his shoulder apart, my fourth his knee before Liara's shouting finally gets my attention, cutting through the blood song for my Queen that plays endlessly, sonorously inside my head.

"-er! -rker! Parker!" Not now I silently beg don't stop me now I'm finally doing what I'm _supposed_ to do and if you stop me I'll have to go back and _face myself_ and then I'll never be able to _trust_ myself again and it feels so _good_…

Feron's hand takes my shoulder and jerks me back, spilling me unceremoniously onto my back. The dead wing-bird-Turian has more bones broken than whole, bleeding from every tear in his armour.

The song is silent.

Good god. I really am a monster.

And an idiot, too. Right out in the open, in plain view of the snipers that hounded us into this mess. One sniper round nearly killed me through my barrier. Two would certainly finish the job. And just to make matters infinitely worse, another three Blue Suns mercenaries fight their way clear of a collapsed building, bringing their guns up and pointing them straight at me.

That's when the booming retort of a sniper rifle echoes through the street, I sigh in resignation. An idiot indeed.

A moment later, one of the three new mercenaries drops to the ground, just crumples like a marionette with severed strings. In the instant before he hits the ground, I see a massive hole through his torso.

That's interesting.

Another ear-splitting crack echoes through the street, another mercenary drops with half a head.

Very interesting.

Liara and Feron take care of the third mercenary but even before he's dead I don't care about him, he's irrelevant. I stare openly at the rooftop Feron flagged as the sniper's nest, immobile. If anyone on that rooftop had wanted to shoot me, they've had ample time to do so. Nobody's such a bad sniper that they hit their allies twice, not with shots that fatal. So, that means one of two things: either someone's on our side or someone wants Blue Suns dead. There's a slight but subtle difference.

"It seems the Blue Suns snipers are no longer an issue," Feron summarises but I hear the interest in his tone, interest that sours noticeably. "And that we owe the newcomers our thanks."

A human head rises above the line of the roof, shortly followed by the rest of the man, who makes his way down to ground level easily. He raises a hand in greeting, a gesture which I mirror. I'm still not sure if we're going to be allies but it's not wise to antagonise someone with that kind of firepower and positioning. As he closes three figures step out to join him. Black visor obscures their faces but the heavy white armour leaves no doubt about that the newcomers are military.

"Looks like you needed the help," the leader says cockily, resting his Mantis against his shoulder in a casual display of strength. It's hard to hold a gun like that for long. The rest of his group falls in behind him, one woman and two men.

"Possibly," I respond warily, fixing with a flat look. This is Omega. People don't just help others out of the good of their hearts, especially in a place as remote as this. "Why did you intervene?"

Again the man's hands go up, this time in a placating manner. At the thought that he might be submitting, that he might be unprepared to fight and kill me, my Rachni instincts urge me to go for his throat. After all, his weapon is almost useless in close quarters and it would be easy and then I could dominate the rest of them, bind them to my will, employ them against the Broker in whatever manner I saw fit…

"I don't mean no harm to or yours," the white juggernaut says, snapping me out of my daze. Control, I have to control it. Or I'll be the one lying lifeless in the street. "Just seemed like the right thing to do, you know?"

The other three stay silent and even now the leader hasn't raised or cleared his visor. "You're obviously official," I say, changing tactics. "Where do you come from? Are you mercenaries?"

The leader folds his rifle and stows it, tapping his visor. The now-clear window reveals a red-faced human, freckled and tanned. Not from around here, not with that complexion. They're on Omega for something special.

I don't like it when other people know something I don't.

"Yeah, you could say we're mercenaries," he replies cheerfully. "Though we mostly go out without being paid. Fighting for the greater good and all that. I guess that makes us vigilantes instead, huh?"

Perhaps my guess about their origin was wrong? Their leader's demeanour doesn't seem military, even if his equipment does. "So what do you want with us, then?

"Eh, we'll take you back to our base. Debrief you and all that. You guys look pretty well-off yourself, maybe you want to join up with us?"

"Do we have a choice?" Liara asks scathingly, glancing pointedly at the three anonymous troopers still holding their weapons.

The leader smiles. "Hey now, it ain't so bad as all that. We just want to talk, figure out exactly what's going on around here. Come on. I insist."

* * *

"We don't have much time as it is," Liara hisses through our personal comm channel, something our new hosts allowed us. At least there's that. "We have to get away from these people if we want to snatch the objective."

Well, she's growing up quickly. Never referring to anything by name where it's not strictly necessary. If we weren't basically under house arrest I might even be glad.

"Who are these people anyway?" Our Asari companion fumes, reaching for the water.

"I believe they're Cerberus," Feron announces casually. Liara nearly spits out her mouthful.

"I highly doubt that," I retort. "We had some run-ins with Cerberus while we were tracking Saren. They'd only have saved us to put a bullet in our heads themselves."

"Oh?" The Drell enquires. "Then what is your opinion of our hosts?"

"Black-ops Alliance, maybe, or a PMC. I can see Anderson pulling some strings to get us some extra manpower."

"A little rough for the Councillor's hires, I would think," Liara argues. "I believe them. There are countless small groups in the galaxy that do what they claim to do. Omega needs people like them. Protectors."

The words hit my head like a bolt of lightning. Like a nonsensical puzzle that suddenly makes sense.

Vigilante-Omega-Protector. Archangel. Garrus Vakarian. Two year timespan of insurgency on Omega with nominal goal of improving civilian quality of life. Eventual recruitment by Shepard near beginning of events of Mass Effect 2. Traitorous member of squad necessitating Shepard's intervention. Secondary squad that really should have been more expanded on by Bioware, a period in which Vakarian gains versatile leadership experience that makes him an ideal choice for… something.

I remember. Some of it, at least. Too little, too late.

Shepard should be alive.

Fuck.

The door creaks, old metal shrieking as it opens. The woman standing in the open portal studies us carefully and another spasm of recollection shoots through my skull.

Codename Prodigal, genetically-adjusted human clone. Alternate gender reproduction of human mogul Henry Lawson with goal of perfecting human ability. Nearly all attributes specifically chosen. Capable biotic, notable tech skills. Second in command of pro-human terrorist organization 'Cerberus'.

"I suspect you're wondering what you're all doing here," she says. The accent drives even more memories home. Younger sister, genetically identical twin, follow-up on first prototype's results. Potentially used as replacement for Prodigal should she prove difficult. Name; Oriana Lawson. Which makes this person… "My name is-" She continues.

"Miranda Lawson." I finish, barely even aware that my mouth is moving. The woman stills, her broader focus narrowing instantly to a laser-sharp piercing stare.

Well, I guess Feron was right. Which means we are in a substantial degree of trouble. Lawson opens her mouth to speak but I beat her to it. "What does Cerberus want with us, then?"

Liara starts and I see her hand move under the table where the glow of biotics is more easily hidden.

Miranda hesitates, probably deciding whether or not to follow up on my knowledge of her. Evidently, it can wait. "Well. That takes care of introductions. You're here because we have a common interest."

I wait for her to continue and she waits for me to speak. She raises an eyebrow, I grit my teeth silently. I'm in no position to wait her out. "And what might that interest be? I'd say that considering Cerberus' track record with us and non-humans in general I'd say we have very few things in common."

The perfect human being smiles. It's a smile I know well, the smile where you have your enemies by the short hairs. "We both have an interest in recovering the corpse of Commander Shepard, do we not?"

"I don't think we do," Liara declares with cold ferocity. "We want to give her a proper burial. Not turn her over to your psychopathic scientists to cut up and experiment on."

The prodigal sighs. "I expected nothing different. I haven't been given clearance to discuss the project with you, so I'll let you hear it firsthand." From a pocket she produces a small sphere, a free-floating device around which the hologram of a human forms.

A human in an impeccable suit, with features reminiscent of an elder statesman. The sight brings back yet more memoires. Are they triggered by visual stimulus? Then why haven't more returned on the Citadel? It's also possible that they're triggered by trauma. Either way, I know who he is: The Illusive Man, head and founder of Cerberus. Excessively dangerous, if my partially-returned memories are any indication. A master of information control, manipulation and a tested combat veteran.

The hologram is full colour too, so I received the full weight of his piercing green eyes boring into my face. "Tobias Parker. I've been hoping our paths would cross."

Blatantly ignoring Liara and Feron, I see. I suppose I shouldn't have expected any different from the leader of a xenophobic human-supremacist group. "Is that so? I can't imagine why," I reply coldly. No, Cerberus hasn't done me any favours, that's for sure.

The Illusive Man frowns slightly, as if he has no idea what I'm talking about. His hands don't move into a defensive position, either. "You are the only human survivor of the mission to track and eliminate Saren Arterius. Not even Commander Shepard herself could survive in the end." Damn, he's cold. I thought I was good at brutal ruthlessness but something in his clear eyes sends shivers down my spine.

No, it would certainly not be a good idea to mention that I know his name. I don't want to be a pawn in Jack Harper's schemes and in no way am I threatening enough to give him pause. Hell, if he knew about my Rachni physiology he'd probably already want to dissect me. I can't deny there's a sweet appeal to dropping a bomb I have no way of knowing but such a momentary pleasure would be just that- momentary.

I'm sure it would be a great solace while my brain was being extracted with a spatula.

So instead of trying to score verbal points, I fold my arms. "Shepard survived the mission. Given your infiltration of AONI, I feel it's a safe assumption you know she didn't have a chance to fight for her own survival. And I still haven't heard a reason why you'd want our paths to cross."

The Illusive Man's eyebrow rises fractionally at the mention of AONI. Hey, I might not want to declare myself a threat but I sure as hell don't want to come across as defenceless.

"You certainly don't disappoint," he says with a smile. "As you seem rather impatient, I'll cut to the heart of the matter. Operative Lawson is, under my direct supervision, leading a task group codenamed 'Lazarus'. Are you familiar with the tale?"

"Lazarus," I intone impatiently. "A friend and follower of Jesus of Nazareth who died during the years of Jesus' ministry. He was later raised from the dead by the Messiah as recorded in the Bible. Some scholars attribute to him the Gospel of John."

It's only then that the importance of those words filter into my brain.

"You can't be serious," I state flatly.

"On the contrary," Cerberus' founder answers with a satisfied smile. "I'm quite serious."

Project Lazarus. Succinctly, a project with one goal: the restoration of life to one who has ceased to live. Resurrection of the dead. The words themselves are simple to grasp but the enormity of their combined meaning nearly knocks me from my feet. I mean, that's what death _is_. Death is, it's the absence of life. I once heard one of my teachers say that cold wasn't the opposite of heat, just its absence. That darkness wasn't the opposite of light, just its absence.

Death isn't life's opposite, not really. Just its absence. So I can understand the conceptual idea, the theoretical possibility that sometime in the future medical science might advance to a point where even death is curable.

But this isn't some abstract point in the future. This is here. This is now.

I could have my Queen back.

Well damn. Doesn't that just change things. "How certain are you of success?" I shoot at the hologram. "It's all well and good to say you can do the impossible but talk is cheap."

"I can only offer you my personal assurance at this point in time. Doubtless if you were at a Cerberus installation or even a civilised world I could deliver the research to you but that's not the case."

Yeah, I walked into that one. Tch. Fine. "So you've proven we have a common interest. You still haven't solved the problem we have with working with Cerberus."

"I assure you, your other associates will come to no harm from my people. Distasteful though it might be, they are necessary to bring this part of Project Lazarus to completion."

"That doesn't solve any problems _I_ might have with Cerberus," I answer caustically, irritated at how blatantly he's dismissing Liara and Feron. "I'm sure your surveillance has everything about my life from the moment I was born. I don't like humanity all that much, you know. Why would I want to work with a pro-human terrorist and his sycophants? Especially after that clusterfuck with your Project Scourge."

Harper nods. "Ah, that explains your reluctance. I apologise for the actions of my former subordinates, though I can't take responsibility for the actions of deserters."

That lying, cunning, manipulative bastard. Deserters, my ass.

"Deserters, were they?" I ask, phrasing it as a question. It's not.

"I'm afraid so," he answers in the same tone, looking me dead in the eye. He doesn't even flinch.

It's almost enough to convince me he's telling the truth. I won't bring up Pressley, since that was all technically my fault.

I force myself to smile. "Well," I say, injecting far more cheer into the word than previously. "It would be unfair to judge you and your people based on the actions of a few traitors."

"Excellent," the image responds graciously. "Operative Lawson will brief you on our leads and resources. Good luck."

So much for simplicity.

* * *

_A/N: Cerberus, the Broker and Mercenaries oh my. I hope this fits the bill for fast-paced, cause there'll be no breaks for exposition until the end I hope. Like I said earlier, I don't want this story to drag on._

_First things first, what I've been reading lately. On the SI front, I have to recommend **DelVar0**'s story **Massed Up** and it's sequel, **Massed Up 2**. Both are fun, well-written engaging stories with strong characters and a few OCs that fit in beautifully. Other awesome stories include **The Naked Pen**'s **Mass Effect: Interregnum**, which is the best portrayal of Omega and Garrus' Archangel days that I've ever seen. I've been rereading it to get into the Omega feel, and been since battling with an inferiority complex. But seriously, all three are great pieces of writing and I recommend them wholeheartedly._

_Secondly, shoutouts. To The Extroverted Recluse, my stupendously awesome editor, I couldn't do it without her. Also to everyone who's reviewed and critiqued thus far, thank you for your interest and feedback! It's all been super helpful and it definitely encourages me to write faster. To my guest reviewers, I'd love to respond to you personally but I can't unless you have an account on the site! _

_Thirdly and most importantly, _**BIG NEWS! READ THIS!** _I'd like everyone to weigh in for this! Initially I'd planned for The Reclamation Effect to be the story of how Parker, Liara and co go about getting Shepard's body to Project Lazarus so she can come back. However, that was never going to be more than a month or so of the two-year timeskip. I have Parker's activities planned out for the entire period, so my question to you readers is this: Would you like me to write more original stories in the two-year gap (I have one planned), or do you want the events of the two years to be gradually revealed as Mass Effect 2 unfolds? **I will be hosting a poll on my profile that I'll be using to gauge response**, but if you'd like me to respond personally you can always review or PM me. _

_Last, well, you people are all awesome for taking time out of your days to read my stuff. I'm super grateful to all of you! Let me know what you thought of the chapter in a review or a PM, have a crack at predicting the future of the story if you're feeling bold! Have an awesome fortnight. Until next time!_


	4. Mandate

_There is no better spy than a slave. They may go anywhere, do anything. They can ask questions that would be suspicious because everyone believes a slave is stupid, even given evidence to the contrary._

* * *

_**The Reclamation Effect**_

_**Chapter Three**_

* * *

_man·date (noun)_

_An authoritative command or instruction._

* * *

"Well, let's consolidate our information," Miranda begins, stepping forward even as the hologram of The Illusive Man disappears.

I hold up a hand, forestalling her. "Excuse me, but who died and made you Queen? What makes you think I'll follow your orders?" Lawson narrows her eyes, obviously reconsidering her position. "I said I'd work _with_ Cerberus. Not _for_ Cerberus."

Lawson fixes me with a flinty look, obviously unimpressed. " first then."

"We know who's holding the body, where they're holding it and what they plan to do with it," I answer in rapid staccato, gloating just a little.

"Eclipse, one of their warehouses, sell it to the Shadow Broker," Miranda answers with a hint of smugness. I should have known.

Huh. Damn. It really wouldn't do to let on how much she annoys me right now. "Feron's our local. He knows the best ways there. Let's go."

* * *

"The Eclipse base will be heavily guarded," Feron notes blandly, projecting a translucent set of blueprints from his omnitool. We're close now, only a few blocks away. 'Day' and 'night' are fairly arbitrary descriptions on Omega but people need a routine. It's six in the morning, local time, and I can see Liara struggle with the lack of sleep. "Thanks to my contact we have the advantage of complete navigation data, though we do not know the number of Eclipse soldiers deployed to the site. I believe the planning of the military operation itself falls to Ms. Lawson and Mr. Parker. Have you any thoughts?"

"We're a bit short on manpower for a proper operation," Miranda notes critically. In addition to the three of us, Miranda brought everyone she could from the Cerberus safehouse; four ex-Alliance marines. There could be three dozen Eclipse mercenaries at the base; it's not great odds.

"But for a stealth operation, eight isn't unmanageable," I counter.

"True," the Cerberus lieutenant muses, examining Feron's blueprint. "Though we don't know where they're keeping the body. It could be anywhere."

"It would have to be in this open area, wouldn't it?" Liara suggests, poking a finger into the wireframe. "It's the only place big enough for the trade."

"They might have it hidden away until the last moment, but it's the best bet," Miranda's second-in-command summarises. "What's our combat specialities?"

"Liara and I are biotics, not soldiers," I begin. I can't speak for Feron but I don't think he's a natural fighter either. "I know Miranda is a powerful biotic too, so we're about covered there."

Miranda's head snaps around at my last sentence, her eyes cold and calculating. Probably wondering how I know that, but we both know we don't have time for a Q&A session. After a few seconds she breaks the glare, though her clenched hands suggest the matter isn't finished. "All five of us are certified by Cerberus' advanced combat training programme," Lawson states calmly, her professionalism coming to the fore. "I am also proficient in tech warfare."

So we've got our frontline and biotic support. "Feron?" Liara asks. None of us have really gotten a chance to see how the Drell performs in a real fight yet.

The informer's face twitches up in a pseudo-smile. "I'm afraid my skills with firearms are unspectacular. However, I am competent in the use of an omni-tool."

"Does he always talk like that?" One of the marines whispers.

"As for weapons we've got a sniper rifle, grenades and two shotguns plus assault rifles for the four of us," the lead marine notes, ignoring his comrade. "Prodigal's got her SMG, you three set for guns?"

"Pistols only, I'm afraid," I answer. Well, it's not a bad spread. One sniper, two vanguards and a demolitions expert not counting Miranda, Feron, Liara and myself.

"Now, the attack," Liara says, impatiently forcing us back to the matter at hand. "Any suggestions?"

"This entrance seems like the best option," Miranda suggests, magnifying the location on the blueprint. "If we can get in without raising the alarm, we should be able to make it to this vantage point without much difficulty. From there, we can secure the main area without much difficulty." A red line appears on Feron's projection, illustrating Miranda's proposed route. It looks solid, but the guards outside are still a problem. Liara's mind evidently works like mine. She voices the concern.

"I believe I have a solution," Feron counters. "The path of the sentinel's patrols is set. Aside from the watcher stationed on the roof, there is little long-distance surveillance. If we can remove him, the other four guards on the ground will be much easier to bypass."

"So that's a sniper's job," I guess. Miranda nods. Feron, on the other hand, shakes his head.

"I'd like to take him alive," he suggests. The look Miranda gives him could peel layers off stone. The Drell relents with an inclination of the head.

"Let's go," Liara insists, her face contorted by anxiety. "We're running out of time."

* * *

"Emmons?" Miranda whispers, a hand pressed to her ear.

One silenced shot later, the Cerberus marine replies. "Sentry eliminated. The path is clear, maintaining overwatch."

No one says anything but all of us react. The two heavily armoured marines lead the way, covering Miranda as she crouches next to the lock. It only takes her a few seconds to break the system and the reinforced steel door slides open. The seven of us move through as fast as we can, the final Cerberus trooper pulling the door shut after us. Cut off from Omega's red luminescence, we're left in darkness.

"No lights?" Liara whispers, feeling her way toward the ladder to the upper level, instead finding an internal door. She's right. Even if it's night, total darkness is taking it a little too far.

Why don't we just break the door down? Enough with all the sneaking, the planning, the manipulating. The delays are frustrating, infuriating. Shepard's body is right _there_, only a few meters away, hidden by a few doors and a few men. I can just go now, kill them and bring my Queen back.

It's strange. I can't really think of a reason _not_ to. All the preparation, is it really needed?

I hiss quietly to myself, slowly painting the air the colour of blood. Rachni fight with honour, not with treachery and trickery. A noble fight, with the better warrior allowed to live on. These soldiers-for-hire, these mercenaries know nothing of honour. They are weak. So I will live and they will die.

I smash the door open with a biotic fist and light illuminates the dark room, streaming in from the warehouse's central room. The others with me stare in shock, or maybe incredulity. It doesn't matter. They can't possibly comprehend what it was to be a true hive-warrior, a part of an infinitely greater whole. Even if I am to die, my death would benefit the colony.

"What the fuck are you doing?" The Cerberus woman snarls at me. I just raise my eyebrow at her. She crouches, hiding herself behind a series of rusted machinery. Coward.

Then Liara grabs my wrist, jerking me back behind the wall. The pressure of her grip causes me to blink; the world greys out. Part of me screams and thrashes at the loss of Rachni colour but the rest of me gasps in panic, looking for gunshot wounds. Walking straight into an enemy stronghold without even a barrier set up? Lunacy. Suicide.

"Holy crap," I breathe, eyes wide. I knew the Rachni impulses could be strong, but not like that. It just… crept up on me. I scratch my chest nervously; if it's that easy to fall into that mind then what else is it controlling? What else have I lost?

Silence reigns for a second. Liara curses. My eyebrows shoot up; I didn't know the petite Asari knew that kind of language.

"Something's wrong," she announces, stepping past my panting form and striding confidently into the open space of the warehouse, straight into the killzone.

And nothing happens.

"We're too late," Miranda fumes, slamming her SMG back into its holster with more force than is necessary. Sure enough, she's right. The Cerberus lieutenant follows the Asari out into the light, hands on her hips. I follow cautiously, shading my eyes from the light. They're right, there's not a mercenary in sight. No personal effects left out, not a piece of mess or clutter. It looks like the place is completely bare. "Check the top floor," she orders her troopers. They depart without a sound.

"They already moved the body?" I ask slowly, at some level vaguely aware of just how much that brief bout of insanity shook me up.

"I've found something, ma'am." One of the Cerberus marines, calling from the upper level. I think her name is Akhal or something? "A dead Salarian. One of the mercenaries. Looks like he was executed."

Feron flinches, showing the most emotion I've ever seen. He pushes past Liara, climbing the closest ladder with hasty movements. A brief silence reigns, then the Omega native speaks.

"My informant. The cause of death is consistent with Eclipse executions."

Miranda curses. "They must have discovered he was leaking information and killed him, then moved the body."

"What do we do?" I ask dumbly. My mind; it's not working. I… I can't _think_. I nearly died. I _should_ have died. It's not important, it's over, I need to move on and start making plans, coming up with possibilities.

'Should' is the operative word.

"Parker? What do we do?" Liara asks. No, don't ask me now! Please!

I stutter incoherently, a little more hope vanishes from her eyes. "Figure it out," I finally get out, not that I know what there is to figure out. We haven't got a hope.

But the words bring a change over the timid Asari. She thinks for a second. "Feron, is there a control room here? Somewhere to store the footage from the security cameras?" She points to a camera overlooking the floor, its light dim.

Feron takes a second to compose himself before answering. "Yes, it shouldn't be hard to find. But the base personnel would have deleted any data before they left."

Miranda steps forward, forcefully interjecting herself into the conversation. "There's deleted and _deleted_," she smirks. "Let's see just how good their techs are."

One of the Cerberus troopers leads us to the control room. Miranda seats herself at the console, rolling her wrists in preparation. "Like I thought." Flashing a predatory smile, the Cerberus lieutenant starts typing. "When you delete something from a computer, it's not actually deleted," she explains, flingers still flying. "It just gives the system permission to overwrite it if space gets low. Even if something is rewritten parts of it can still be recovered… To guarantee something is truly irretrievable, you generally have to destroy the storage drive itself."

"And?" Liara asks as the human woman frowns.

"Sloppy," she declares distastefully. "Very sloppy work. Almost easy enough that I'd say it's a trap. I've got the files for the last two days, or most of it. We'll just have to hope the information isn't corrupted."

The various screens combine to form one composite image, we all lean in to see. Miranda plays the video fast, the camera centred on a black military coffin. Eclipse mercs drift in and out of the picture, leaning against the walls or patrolling the upper level. Near the end of the video, a struggling Salarian is dragged into the warehouse. Miranda instantly slows the video to normal speed.

"I didn't do it! He shouts, kicking and struggling. "It wasn't me! I swear! I didn't do-" His cries are cut off by a hard punch to the back of the head and the mercenary goes limp.

"Traitorous bastard," one of the mercenaries mutters darkly, before raising his voice to the rest of his cohort. "Boys, we need to move the cargo. People are trying to steal our payday. So break camp, we're out in half an hour. Go!" The rest of the words, spoken to his aide, are almost impossible to hear. "The Broker's boys are already here. And they brought some guests with them." The mercenary shivers, and even his armour can't hide the fact. "Collectors. Damn things give me the creeps."

A few moments later, the feed goes to static. "So we don't know where they moved the body," one of Miranda's men grunts in frustration, kicking out at an empty crate.

"But we know there are Collectors on the station," Miranda sighs, running her hand through her hair in frustration. "I didn't think Aria would allow their presence. Collectors are bad news."

The words strike a chord, and my head snaps back up. "What if she doesn't know?"

The words give Miranda pause. Then a small smile creeps across her face, growing until it almost touches her ears. "Then she'd be very interested. Let's go."

* * *

We make good time back to Afterlife. Since Cerberus brought a pair of cars, transport is a lot less complicated. It's full daytime now, so the only people left in the club are the hopelessly drunk from the night before, mostly lying in various states of nudity on the floor. Even in the off period, the music still pounds. Afterlife never sleeps, it seems. Miranda doesn't even need to pay the Elcor bouncer, just drops a flirty wink and we're in, leaving the four marines to watch the engines. The guard at the bottom of Aria's stair poses about as much resistance to the raven-haired operative. In thirty seconds we're standing before the Pirate Queen herself. Feron and Liara stay on the ground level, watching the exits, ready to fight at a moment's notice.

My breath catches at the sight of her. It's one thing to know Aria T'Loak is the ruler of Omega, another thing entirely to see her in the flesh. There are no two ways about it; she's a dangerous woman. I don't even know how, but she palpably exudes an aura of menace and command. "I wondered if I would see you here. But on Omega everyone _needs_ something. Nobody ever has enough. And so you come to me. Well. Come in to my parlour, said the spider to the fly," she says softly, almost singing the last few words as she observes us. "Tobias Parker. Miranda Lawson. What an odd pair you make. What does the Queen of Omega have that you want?" She laughs mirthlessly. "What _don't_ I have that you want?" She nods to the vacant couch to her right. We sit.

"An information trade," Miranda says evenly, never taking her eyes off the Asari.

Perfect lips quirk into an amused chuckle, and somehow the noise carries despite the booming of the club's music. "A trade? And what is it that makes you think I don't already have everything? That I don't know _everything_ that happens on my station?"

"Something like mercenaries selling the corpse of a galactic icon to the Shadow Broker?" I suggest rhetorically, crossing my arms. It's impossible not to be intimidated. The woman is madness and violence personified. She could probably turn my head into a pancake with her biotics.

This time, the Pirate Queen looks a touch disappointed. "Oh, _Tobias_," she says, the casual use of my first name burrowing into my skin. "I really thought you'd have something to surprise me. After all, the Broker doesn't let many people go. Well. Not _alive_, at any rate." She raises a hand; all of her guards simultaneously aim their guns at our faces. A quick glance at the main floor shows Liara and Feron equally covered.

Ah. I didn't consider that she might want to claim the bounty on my head… Then again, I have made it exceedingly simply for her. What with walking into her base and all.

"I understand why the Broker chose to conduct his business on Omega," Miranda interjects, not even flinching at the threat. "It's excellent neutral ground and you probably even get a cut of the sale."

"Perhaps," Omega's ruler replies candidly.

"Then you must also know about the Broker's additional guests," Miranda fishes. I hold my breath. This is it. If Aria knows about the Collectors, we're sunk. We have literally one card and this is it.

The Pirate Queen doesn't flinch; the black barrels don't move a millimetre. I swallow nervously. One word from her, and we're both dead. Six guards surrounding us. More on the ground level. Aria herself is a biotic of prodigious strength. No way out.

Miranda's eyes narrow fractionally, like a shark with blood in the water. She leans in a fraction closer, speaks a touch softer. "Collectors," she whispers.

Aria twitches. Barely a one muscle in her entire face for a single tenth of a second.

Time passes, about thirty seconds where nobody moves a muscle. Then Aria's eyes are the ones to narrow, and the guards step back to their usual position. "Well," the Queen says softly. "I told him not bring those slavers onto my station. How… _unfortunate_."

Shivers ripple up my spine. The sheer malice in her tone is terrifying.

More time passes; a bead of sweat rolls down my neck. "A trade," Miranda repeats smoothly, cool as ice. "The location of the sale."

It's an arrangement that benefits everyone. She knows we want to mess with whatever the Broker is doing. Why expend her own manpower when we'll do it for her?

"Athra District," the Queen responds flatly. "Sector eight. Third and Kellick. Thirty minutes." She stands, turns her back to us and we stand as well. "I suggest you hurry."

* * *

"Are we going to make it?" Liara asks, bracing her arm against the side of the speeding aircar as Miranda smashes the accelerator to the floor, weaving through slower traffic.

"Perhaps," Feron offers placidly, omnitool open.

"No," Miranda growls, sending the car sideways to blast between two buildings. "We're going miss it unless I can get extra speed out of this piece of junk." Her accent intensifies when she's pissed.

"So, we'll follow the Broker's group and steal the body from them?" I ask.

"No other choice," she grunts, barely sparing the concentration necessary to form words.

"I have a camera at that plaza," Feron announces in surprise and Liara and I turn to face him, matching expressions of incredulity on our faces. "It has been deactivated for some time. I had assumed it destroyed. It seems Aria has seen fit to return it to my control for the time being."

Feron presses a few buttons. Suddenly the camera's video feed is playing through my helmet. It's a wide shot, looking down from one of the taller buildings. The Eclipse crew is already there, eighteen mercenaries standing in formation. Six more stand behind them with the coffin on their shoulders like armoured pallbearers. They're not taking chances with this one.

"If the Broker is late, we might be able to steal the body," Liara suggests, hope in her eyes.

"No chance," I retort mercilessly. "The Broker isn't late."

On cue, another armed group steps slowly into the frame, what looks like a score of soldiers clad in black armour. The Shadow Broker's private military, all of them at least N5 level. Twenty of them, though. How the hell are we supposed to take on twenty Broker troopers with just the eight of us?

Behind the lines of black-armoured soldiers, three distinctly different figures step into view. There's no mistaking the flattened heads, the angular joints, the spined rifles. No mistaking the glowing yellow eyes.

The sight hits me like a battering ram and understanding flashes through my neurons.

-remnant-perversion-husk-tool-victim-enemy-foe-nemesis-_abomination_.The searing, almost flaming eyes of the centre Collector, a gaze that instills pure despair.

Harbinger, leader of the Reapers.

More memories slam home like a hammer to the brain; a tide of Rachni genetic impulses mixed with memories that strike with the force of a lightning bolt. Collectorbasegalaxycentre-colonytakers-**thehunters**-**thetakers**-**_creatorkillers_**.

I'm glad it's just a video image. I don't think I could stop myself from trying to tear their throats out otherwise.

"Parker?" Liara asks, peering through my helmet into my eyes. "Are you alright?"

"They're here," I mumble. "They're here. Collectors. They're here."

"It's starting," Feron announces, fracturing the fog of memories. The leader of the Broker troopers approaches the pale yellow Eclipse division and their leader steps forward.

"We're not going to make it in time!" Miranda fumes, punching the steering wheel as she weaves through a lane of packed traffic.

The sound of gunfire, distorted and staticy, brings my attention back to Feron's camera. The square is a battleground, bright steaks of light flashing between the two forces. Coloured smoke billows across the camera, intermittently breaking up the picture. "Goddess… what happened?" I hear Liara ask. I'm thinking the same thing. Did negotiations break down? Or was killing Eclipse the Broker's plan from the start?

"It started with smoke grenades at the Eclipse position," Feron supplies. "I did not see how the grenades got there, they were not thrown. Eclipse personnel immediately responded by opening fire on the Shadow Broker's forces, who returned the aggression."

"Miranda, ETA?" If there's a firefight, we might not be too late after all. This could be our ticket to victory!

"Six minutes," our pilot responds - the other car is only seconds behind.

Six minutes is an eternity in combat. Both sides have taken cover behind their vehicles, what's left of them. Bodies litter the square, most of them clad in the yellow armour of Eclipse. But despite their skill, there are some broken bodies in black armour strewn across the deck. The casket is simply left out in no-man's land, left where the coffin bearers were killed. It looks like the coffin was fitted with a powerful shield generator, so it won't be destroyed by random crossfire.

Then what was a completely normal battle is totally turned upside down. Grenades fly from the nearby buildings into the square, carpet-bombing both sides of the battlefield, even if far more of the blasts target the black commandos. Bodies fly like ragdolls, simply overwhelmed by the amount of death raining from the sky. The Broker's forces fall back immediately, leaving their dead where they fell. None of the Collectors perished in the skirmish but only half of the twenty Broker troopers manage to withdraw.

The Eclipse fare even worse. Their leader killed by the rain of grenades, they scramble in disarray before armoured shock troopers pour out of the buildings and engage them from all angles, killing all but one mercenary in a matter of seconds. The lone survivor approaches his friend's killers, bumping fists. So. Feron's wasn't the only mole in Eclipse.

I don't recognise the newcomers' mottled red and brown armour but their effectiveness is undeniable. Six of their number sprint to the casket and load it into one of the Eclipse vans, vanishing from the camera's vantage. The remaining nine shock troopers climb into the remaining mercenary transports, shepherding four smaller, lightly armoured figures with them. They embark and scatter, each transport rocketing in a different direction.

"I've never seen them operate in person," Feron remarks, rolling his head back as the camera feed shuts down. "The Batarian Hegemony's Special Intervention Unit. Very impressive."

"The _Batarians_ are involved?" Miranda shouts, still manoeuvring the car. "Why would _they _want to be involved in this?"

"Shepard did pretty much single-handedly stop the Skyllian Blitz," I point out. "And she led the attack on Torfan which killed just about every Batarian on the surface. They probably want revenge." Batarians are a vengeful, violent people. Desecrating the corpse of an enemy wouldn't be out of their comfort zone.

Miranda's hands creak as she clenches the steering vane. "This had to get more complicated, didn't it? What now?"

"The SIU were moving lightly armoured individuals," Feron recalls. "They are likely Batarian External Forces agents, the Hegemony's spies in the galaxy. I would recommend capturing one." The Drell smiles, and for a second I wonder if he learned from Aria. "One of their transports was headed in this direction."

Sure enough, an Eclipse transport pulls into the traffic line, doing its best to stay inconspicuous. Miranda pulls the skycar around, easing up on the speed and slotting in behind the Batarians. The Cerberus marines pull in behind us, and Miranda smiles. "That's an old transport, unshielded. Drell, how strong can you make your overload?"

"A simultaneous overload to disrupt the entire skycar? Yes, that would be effective on an older model. Liara, would you be able to join us?"

The three of them arm their omnitools. The Cerberus operator counts down. A torrent of electricity slams into the Batarian's car on her mark. Instantly the van shakes. The internal lights flicker before the whole craft rolls to the side and dives straight down, totally powerless. Emergency flight fins spring from the car's sides and the pilot manages to get the van level for a brief second. Then Miranda slams our car onto their roof, grinding them down with the underside of our car. The pressure forces them out of their glide until the car crashes into the ground in a rain of sparks, a shriek of tortured metal howling through the air.

The roof of our car lifts up before Miranda even brings the skycar to the ground and I'm out and running, leaving Liara and Feron struggling with seatbelts. One biotic hand wrenches the van's side door open, the second punches the groggy pilot just regaining his footing. He hits the other side of the shuttle hard enough to dent the frame, lapsing onto the floor, out of the fight. There are two more armoured Batarians in the hold, but despite seatbelts both of them are in no state to fight. The first tries a clumsy haymaker, barely strong enough to turn my head. It's almost too easy to use the momentum to swing a wide punch, hitting him so hard his neck breaks.

The second cuts his belt with a knife, charging forward and stabbing towards my neck. I pool biotic energy around my fist, blasting him with a Throw powerful enough to shoot him straight through the weakened plating. The lighter-armoured figure just sags in his seat, knocked out by the crash. Perfect. I sling his body over my shoulder, jogging back to the skycar.

Every step of the way, I expect people to stop me. To call out. I mean, there are civilians everywhere. Two or three were even struck by the crashing van, wounded or worse, bleeding onto the ground. And nobody says a word, just watches with darkened eyes. Miranda pops the car's trunk and I sling the limp body inside.

Not bad for an impromptu kidnapping.

* * *

Driving more sedately to avoid attracting attention, Miranda brings us back to the Cerberus safehouse. The four Cerberus troopers handle the menial jobs, tying the prisoner to a chair and keeping a lookout. Feron found a tracker implanted in his arm and fried it with a quick overload but we still could have been followed.

"We won't be able to use this safehouse anymore," Lawson murmurs to me. "Not when there's a chance it can be identified."

"He's awake," Liara informs us. Feron is already in the room. The Cerberus lieutenant silently volunteers me as spokesman. Why, I have no idea. It's not important.

"Humans," the red-skinned alien croaks, pure hatred in his voice. "The scum of the galaxy. Not surprising that you'd stoop to kidnapping like this."

Now, I don't like humanity all that much. I think for the most part humanity is impatient, even a touch disrespectful to the galaxy at large. Then again, ever since we got a council seat interspecies relations have improved a lot.

But if I don't like humans, I loathe Batarians. I hate how they always try to take the moral high ground, how they always have this self-assured, arrogant bearing. They practice slavery, levy the death penalty for the smallest offenses and consider dominion their racial right. Well, it's finally time to change that.

"First, kidnapping is hardly a crime next to stealing a corpse and planning to desecrate it as propaganda. Second, you're a spy. Being kidnapped is basically in your job description. Thirdly, where are your people taking the body?"

The red-skinned alien smiles condescendingly. "I won't ever talk to a fucking _human_," he spits, infusing the words with more hatred than I've ever felt. So much for negotiation.

"I think you should know," I say, surprised at the arctic tone of my voice, "that I'm going to make you beg to die before you tell me."

The Batarian laughs, arms and legs still bound. Instead of another racist outburst he just snorts his disdain and spits at me. The wad of phlegm lands a centimetre from my boot, indistinguishable against the filthy floor.

"Miranda," I ask the Cerberus officer politely, "Could you please bring me my bag? I'll need it."

The operative complies, obviously curious, still assured of his fortitude. I withdraw a small, heavy plastic jar, thump it down on the counter. It's the last thing I packed; the pet from my apartment. The captive alien twitches at the noise, but otherwise doesn't react. "This," I tell him calmly, "is an Irukandji Jellyfish, mostly native to my home country of Australia on Earth. As you can see, it's very small and very fragile. I'm giving you one last chance to tell me where your safehouse is. Or you will die."

For a second, there's silence. Then the Batarian speaks. "Okay, okay, I'll talk. Here's what you do. You need to go to the nearest chemist, ask for something called Viagra and it'll help you _go fuck yourself_!"

My mouth hardens into a flat line, so taut that my lips look pale as skin. The only thing that stops me from killing him on the spot is knowing that death is exactly what he wants.

"Doubtless you think you're hilarious. Well, have it your way. I think you should know, though, exactly what you're getting into. Despite its size, this little thing is one of if not the most venomous things on Earth. You've heard of tarantulas and cobras, I hope?" The Batarian nods, a touch of wariness finally showing through his veneer of confidence. "Good. Well, the venom this beautiful little waif carries is about one thousand times more potent than a tarantula bite. Have fun."

With that, I upend the jar over his head.

Water drenches the spy's head, and the little white jellyfish latches onto his bald scalp. The red-skinned alien twitches, but smiles in relief. "Is that it? I've felt worse pinches."

I smile back, absolutely nothing friendly in the expression.

Liara glances nervously at her omnitool, reading the time. "Parker, we really don't have time for this."

I wave her off, still staring cheerfully at the Batarian's lower eyes. Minutes pass in silence, the Batarian's confident look slowly starts to twitch and fade. His arms and legs tense suddenly and the captive bites back on a curse.

"Worse pinches, you say? Must have been an awfully bad pinch. You see, the Irukandji has rather delayed venom. About fifteen minutes from contact, it starts to fully take effect. It's been," I check my omnitool, "seven minutes. Still a ways to go yet."

The alien spits through clenched teeth. "I… can… handle… this."

I pat him on the shoulder, avoiding the jellyfish that still clings to his head. Long dead by now of course, but its stingers could still be dangerous. "I'm sure you think you can. But can you? Can you really?"

Then, five minutes later, the Batarian loses the battle and starts screaming. Endlessly. How troublesome. He can't tell us anything if he rips his vocal cords apart. I force his mouth shut, slapping a small stasis field into place to stop the screaming. It'll also stop him from biting his tongue off, too. Two birds with one stone.

"What's happening? Liara asks. She looks a little off-colour.

"The constant screaming would damage his throat," Miranda reply casually. "Nicely done."

I accept the compliment with a slight nod, but Liara definitely looks paler. "No, what's happening to him?"

I purse my lips. "Well, Irukandji venom has the intriguing quality of making the victim feel the most excruciating pain possible without actually killing them. If you mean physiologically, then he's probably experiencing severe muscle cramps and intense pain at various parts of the body, primarily in the arms, legs, back, kidneys, skin and face. He'll also be feeling a headache, nausea, be sweating excessively, vomiting, and finally, an increase in heart rate and blood pressure." I look over at Miranda. "We should make sure he can still vomit or he'll suffocate."

What little blood left in Liara's face drains completely. "You're _torturing_ him," she gasps. "That's a living being, and you're _torturing_ him. How can you do that? How can you stand there so easily?! What's _wrong_ with you!?" She turns to Feron for support but the Drell just gazes back, eyes dull.

This is Omega. There are no rules, no morals. She only just realised that? Slow. Very, very slow.

"Of course we are," Miranda replies, crossing her legs. "Do you want Shepard's body or not?" Her voice is calm, unwavering even in the middle of this cold-blooded torture. Then again, I can't say my voice would waver if I spoke.

Maybe that's why I keep my mouth shut.

"Will he survive?" the Asari asks hesitantly. She looks pale and sickly, and little trembles wrack her frame every few seconds.

"Probably," I answer. "The venom is rarely fatal. Unlike its elder cousin, the Box jellyfish."

Miranda approves, apparently. "It's quite an inspired choice." I nod my thanks.

It's been about half an hour since the venom took hold. Long enough, I hope. I unravel the stasis around the Batarian's mouth, now that he's had a chance to acclimatize a little to the pain. Thankfully, it doesn't look like he's vomiting yet. "I'm going to die," he sobs. "Please, kill me. Kill me. Get it over with. Anything but this."

For a moment, I just revel in the sight. The proud, stern, racist Batarian grovelling in the chair.

Then I tilt my head, appraising him coldly. "Where did your people take the body? Tell me and I'll grant your wish."

The alien only hesitates for a fraction of a second. "Kenzo District, sector fourteen, apartment building 2-73. The lock code is epsilon-63409-gamma. Please. End it."

"Let's go," I say. Feron and Miranda just nod, but Liara still looks horrified. "The final piece that makes Irukandji venom so effective," I explain coldly, "is that it instills a sense of impending doom. Almost every single patient on record in over two hundred years has begged their carers to kill them simply to end the pain." I give a razor-edged smile, remembering the way those Batarians had treated us when we first landed. "This way, I get to kill him. And just like I promised, he'll thank me for it."

* * *

_A/N: Guys I'm so sorry. This was all ready to go last night, but I seriously couldn't connect to the internet at all (Recluse didn't pay the internet bill). But here it is, even if it is a bit late. I hope it lives up to the promise of speed, and from here there aren't really any breaks._

_I'm not sure there's much to say about this chapter, I hope it speaks for itself. Aria is a badass, Parker is a potential psychopath, Liara is getting a rough awakening, Miranda is Miranda'ing and Feron is just having another day. And now the Batarians are involved! Seriously, they get in the way of everything. That's all the factions introduced now (if not all the players), so it's all up for grabs (not really, I know how it ends). Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the chapter, and if you've got any comments/feedback/exclamations/crack theories let me know! I love to hear them!_

_Anyway, thanks again to Recluse for her editing. She's pretty cool. I'm a lucky guy. Oh yeah, and the Encyclopedia Biotica is updating again! Awesome!_

_Until next time~_


	5. Phantasm

_The hardest thing is to keep your mouth shut. You'll be tempted to say what you know, or mention that you've met people you've no right to meet. Keep your own counsel and guard your tongue. Good listeners live longer. Remember that it's especially hard to keep your mouth shut when you know more about the subject than those you're with do._

* * *

_**The Reclamation Effect**_

_**Chapter Four**_

* * *

_phan·tasm (noun)_

_1. a figment of the imagination or damaged mind._

* * *

The aircar booms through the Omega smog, weaving deftly between skyscrapers and derelict industrial sectors. It's not a well-populated area, so any kind of occupied building should be hard to miss. I turn to Feron; the Drell has information and I hate going in blind.

"The SIU. What do you know about them?"

The Omega native leans forward, fingers interlacing as he delves into his memory. So long as he doesn't slip into sophilism, we should be fine. "The Special Intervention Unit is the Batarian Hegemony's equivalent to the Alliance's N7 program, the Union's STG, the Hierarchy's Blackwatch and the Republic's Commando units. They are brutally trained and possess the best of the Hegemony's equipment and resources. According to training given by SIU defectors to the Blue Suns, SIU training has approximately an 18% mortality rate. They are a separate entity to the Batarian External Forces, or BEF. Where the BEF specialise in infiltration, intelligence gathering and assassination, SIU units are trained in heavy assault, military demolition and, supposedly, execution of high-profile traitors and enemies of the state."

"Hence their appearance here with Shepard," Liara guesses.

"Probably," Feron murmurs. "Unlike BEF agents, SIU units are rarely deployed outside Batarian space."

"Preferred tactics?" Miranda asks from the driver's seat.

"Much of my information on the subject is as much supposition as fact," Feron warns. "Their common deployment zones and the Hegemony's information suppression makes gathering reliable information difficult. However, I believe they favour high-impact shock tactics. Favoured weapons are shotguns, assault rifles and high ordinance."

"Matches the grenade ambush," Lawson states. You can almost see the wheels in her head turning. "Storming a base filled with Special Forces is going to be difficult."

"Biotics?" Liara and I say almost at the same time, before exchanging looks.

"Unknown," Feron answers. "The Hegemony has a history of military biotic use but I have no information since the Hegemony left the Citadel."

Twin omnitool pings sound and both my and Miranda's eyes flick to our forearms. The name of the sender sends my eyebrows straight up and I can't stop an exclamation of surprise escaping my lips. "It's from Grizz?" Aria's enforcer?

"That guy guarding Aria's platform? What does he want?" Miranda frowns.

"The better question is, what does Aria want?" Liara clarifies, grimace straining her scarred face.

The message is just one picture, a fast shot taken of a Turian's face. The timestamp is only a few minutes ago, the location one of Omega's docking bays. For a second I don't get it, then in a flash of insight it all clicks.

"_Fuck_," I declare emphatically.

"What is it?" Three voices ask at once. I flick the file to Liara and Feron, watch them open the picture.

"I don't recognise him," Liara comments.

"His picture was never made public," I answer. I see by Feron's expression that I'm not the only one that recognises the Turian. "But you might remember an incident in the Temple of Athame on Thessia twenty years ago. An attempted assassination of a high priestess of Athame named Benezia T'Soni."

Liara starts, as I knew she would. "This is the man that almost killed my mother?" She asks, eyes wide.

"The battle destroyed an entire wing of the temple complex," I recall from Eri's lessons, "causing upwards of five billion credits worth of damage to ancient relics and sacred texts. According to eyewitnesses, both sides only used biotics. His name is Tetrimus Rakora, also known as 'The Dagger'. For the last thirty years he's been the Shadow Broker's sole enforcer. He is an exceptionally talented biotic, a former cabalist proficient in stealth, sabotage, hacking, all forms of weapon use, explosives, the works."

"Cerberus ranks Tetrimus Rakora as one of the top five most dangerous biotics in the galaxy, probably top three," Miranda comments, a new edge of tension in her voice. "How do you know about him, Parker?"

"I was raised by an Asari commando," I answer. "She made sure I knew what was out there." Not to mention that I virtually interrogated her about biotics daily.

"Either way, we're in trouble," Miranda summarises. "If the Broker is deploying the Dagger, then things are escalating quickly. We have to assume they're also pursuing the Hegemony forces." She taps a few buttons on her omnitool, opening a call. "Emmons? Sitrep." A few seconds pass and she nods. "The Dagger is on Omega. Exercise all caution."

"You sent your subordinates to watch the survivors of the Broker's force," Feron surmises. "A clever strategy."

"They reported that they had their own Batarian captive," Miranda grimaces. "If so, then they'll probably have the location of the body. This could easily turn into the three-way battle. Emmons will call again if he sees them moving out."

"Speaking of torture, there's something I want to ask," Liara says, leaning a touch closer, her voice a few decibels lower. "You enjoyed it. You enjoyed torturing a man and breaking his will." There's a subtle undertone of accusation in her voice.

"Actually, I didn't," I respond coolly.

"I saw you," she persists. Can't she just leave it alone? "You were talkative, engaged. You only get like that when you're enjoying yourself or what's going on around you."

I hiss in irritation. Are we really doing this now? "Fine. But you're wrong. I didn't enjoy the torture part of it. I enjoyed having power over an asshole like that and I enjoyed winning. Beating him. Are you happy now?"

The scarred Asari recoils just a fraction. "How can you enjoy something like that? How can you enjoy crushing someone's will, forcing them to beg for death? That's… _sick_. How long have you been hiding something like this?"

I've had enough of this. "You know I died once, Liara?" Let her think its allegory. I don't give a damn.

"When?" She responds guardedly.

"With Shepard." Sure, that's the moment I'm referring to. "Course you don't believe me, because I'm right here. Still breathing, still living. But you know, when you're two people one of you can die and to the eyes of everyone else nothing changes. But things change in here," I tap a finger to my forehead, "and in here," pointing to my heart. What started off as pure allegory holds more truth than I'd expected; a part of me did die with her. With my queen.

"So to answer your question," I drawl, locking flat eyes with the uncomfortable heiress, "I'm not hiding anything."

"Sometimes I think you're insane." she shivers.

"I'm not insane." A ghost of a smile graces my face. Oh, if only she knew. "I'm just alone."

* * *

It took the four of us another half hour to reach the safehouse. The Broker's forces have left their own base, moving in this direction. It's a safe bet they know where Shepard's body is. Miranda landed us on top of an old residential tower, mould and rust caking the external AC unit. The Batarian's safehouse is an old warehouse, squat and quiet. As for the Broker's people, we can't see them. They must be here somewhere.

"Three sentries," Liara reports, peering through a pair of binoculars. "All Batarians."

"Matching weapons and armour," Miranda observes. "That means an official unit."

"This is the place," Feron agrees.

"Was… was I right?" The Batarian weeps back at the Cerberus safehouse, still convulsing in agony. I pull the camera feed up on the inside of my helmet. I've never seen a Batarian cry before, so it's a novel experience. Even though he is twitching and occasionally screaming. Then again, I suppose he could be crying over what I asked Feron to put under his chair before we left.

I nod happily. "You were. Thank you."

"Then…" he sniffs piteously. "Please."

I sigh, touching my omnitool. "If you're so insistent."

Halfway across Omega the safehouse explodes in a white-hot inferno, hungry flames spilling out and engulfing the surrounding area. The nearby buildings catch, setting it all ablaze. Oh dear. I didn't think Omega would burn so well. Well, not a loss. They might have to vent the entire district to extinguish it though.

"That'll stir up the wasp's nest," Feron comments dryly. He does everything dryly. Liara just looks at me like I'm depraved.

"There were people near that apartment," she accuses. She'll learn.

I shrug nonchalantly while Miranda speaks. "The fire will both divert attention away from us and kill anyone who might have heard or seen anything," she guesses. "We had to get rid of the safehouse anyway. Very nice."

"Though Aria won't be too happy," I point out.

Miranda nods, conceding the point. "Only if she discovers who was behind the fire."

Then the Cerberus leader frowns, holds a hand to her ear and listens closely. Her mouth contorts into a savage growl and she clenches her teeth in anger. "Tetrimus Rakora has joined the Shadow Broker's surviving soldiers. Emmons and his squad tried to get closer to overhear their conversation. They're all dead."

That makes me blink. Cerberus commandos aren't the galaxy's best soldiers but they're pretty close. "All of them? Just like that?"

Miranda nods, still scowling. "The Dagger didn't get his reputation from rumours."

"Did we get a location on the Broker's forces, at least?" Liara asks. I expected her to be mourning the loss of life. It seems Omega is hardening her after all.

"Exact triangulation is underway," Miranda answers. "But based on early readings, less than five hundred metres. We won't be able to storm the facility without their knowing and if they intervene we'd be caught between two hostile forces. There's no way we'd make it."

"That leaves infiltration," I note.

Feron shakes his head. "Impossible. The cargo is too large. Escaping without detection is not plausible."

"Then what can we do?" Liara asks.

"It seems every aggressive movement is doomed to failure," Feron concurs, "so we must not strike."

"We just… wait?"

"Well, we can wait for the Broker's men to attack then hit them when they're weak," I suggest.

"Much like they want to do to us," Liara points out sardonically.

"But they can't wait," I point out. "The Broker is already playing with fire trying to pull one over on Aria. He can't wait around forever."

Miranda favours us with a condescending look. "And so you just assume he's going to have his men move in immediately."

Automatic weapons fire rips through the daytime, closer than the other sounds of violence. "That gunfire came from the Batarian's location," Feron reports mildly, tone coloured by interest.

Miranda's head whips around, a look of outrage on her face. I shrug. "It was the last thing you'd suspect," I point out. "That makes it the perfect choice."

"We were just fortunate that they couldn't infiltrate quietly," Liara remarks, already moving to the edge of the rooftop. "Let's go."

The scarred Asari hurls herself off the rooftop, body glowing biotic blue as she lowers her mass, touching down on the Omega sidewalk with ease. I leap down after her, body glowing green as I fall. Miranda follows a second later, slowing her fall with her own power. Feron takes the more standard route, sliding down a rusted ladder, gloves protecting his skin.

"We have to get to Shepard's body before they do," Miranda orders, drawing her SMG with practiced speed. Her grasp of the obvious is beginning to annoy me.

I'm about to say something clever and cutting when a wave of malevolent intent sweeps over me like a momentary cold gale. Some foreign instinct orders me to move, even if the only evasive movement I can make is an awkward, clumsy side roll. The space next to me suddenly glows a stark blue, exploding so perfectly that the only debris is dust.

The concussion wave picks me up like a great invisible hand, sending me tumbling head over heels before slamming me into a solid steel wall hard enough to crack my armour, barrier or not. My head reels with the force of the impact, that same instinct telling me to keep moving but my arms and legs won't respond. They just sit uselessly at my sides, buzzing with phantom response.

They respond a touch more appropriately when two pieces of steel rebar the width of my wrist drive through my legs, punching through barrier, armour and flesh alike without a touch of resistance.

The sudden, excruciating pain draws a scream from my mouth, pitiful twitching only amplifying the horrifying numbness in everything from my knees down. Some part of my brain responds immediately, the part that exists to catalogue damage in combat. Possible nerve damage, certainly two broken femurs, potential for additional cracked ribs from pressure wave and initial impact. Most likely severed femoral arteries, blood loss inhibited by the presence of the rods.

Did I step on a bomb? My body is made of pain, I can't move. And I have no idea in hell what happened.

Half a second after the blast, Miranda reacts. She's the first, followed a split-second later by Liara and Feron. Before any of them can move more than an inch a heavy bullet rips through Feron's left shoulder, his automatic response stopping the massive round from tearing straight through his neck.

Liara flares her biotics, a powerful barrier springing into existence quick enough to deflect a second round, the bullet passing through her forearm instead of her heart. Miranda's heightened reflexes allow her to move out of the way, avoiding the third and final slug completely.

All in all, it's been less than two seconds since the primary explosion.

The Cerberus lieutenant steels herself as a pair of combat boots touch down lightly on the ground, shrouded by a biotic barrier. A Turian voice echoes through the suddenly quiet street, his tone tinged with polite interest. "I must say, I've never seen a thinking being react that quickly," he says, dispassionate eyes regarding me quietly. Probably enjoying the sight of red blood bubbling from my shattered thighs, the bastard. "Your survival instincts border on the animalistic. But animals can be predicted."

The Dagger turns his head to Liara and Feron, both of them clutching their wounded bodies in obvious pain. Even if they're alive, they won't be able to do anything. Not to him. As if to prove the point, Miranda's Warp field fizzles against the Turian's barrier, absorbed like it never was. Rakora doesn't even flinch, just turns his gaze on his attacker. "And then there was one."

A massive biotic field shimmers around the Turian's fingers and with a movement so casual it's almost comical he throws a full Flare at the Cerberus lieutenant.

Miranda's eyes widen at the sheer power of the biotic field and she leaps in an acrobatic flip over the volatile mass of energy, the dodge propelling her near my prone form.

"The rods," I gasp, barely able to get the words out. "Pull them out."

"You'll bleed out," Miranda snaps, levelling her SMG and pulling the trigger until the heat sink drops out. Tetrimus slides smoothly behind cover, unwilling to test the unknown power of Miranda's modded weapon.

I force my head to roll to the side, trembling fingers pulling my shattered helmet off. The faceplate and HUD are cracked in more places than I can count; it's worse than useless. "I won't. Just do it."

"This had better be good," she mutters, grabbing one rod in each hand and yanking hard. Blinding white agony shoots through my body and I almost pass out. Before my vision can fade entirely green power pools around my body, instantly eating away at my reserves of energy. Life Transfusion has a terrible cost but I'll gladly pay it when the alternative is failure.

Bone re-knits in microseconds, veins and soft tissue only microns behind. Though the pain doesn't vanish entirely, it's better. A fiery, burning ache in my bones is better than total incapacitation. A few simple movements unlock the shattered plating and I stand without it, eyes narrowed and focused. "You're meat, Dagger," I threaten, cracking my knuckles, hands pooling with power. Ordinarily I'd turn off Life Transfusion to conserve my energy but this isn't an enemy I can beat without cheating a little.

"Impressive," Miranda whispers quietly, her own biotic aura flaring. "What happens if you keep that up?"

"I self-combust," I reply, deadpan. "So we'd better make this count."

Rakora's voice interrupts our banter, this time tinged with genuine interest. "First you avoid my Beam and now incredible regenerative ability. My master's suspicion may yet prove correct, Tobias Parker. A true anomaly. How rare."

"You won't be able to tell him anything if you're dead," I promise. "Let's go, asshole."

"Fascinating as it would prove to be," the Turian responds, rolling into the open as he unslings his sniper rifle, "I'm afraid I'll have to decline." Miranda and I break, forcing the Turian to go after one target at a time. I duck behind a low wall as the sniper round punches into the durasteel, cratering the metal. Miranda drops and rolls as a Warp field tears into the ground, biotic fire forcing her to stumble as she tries to stand. Rakora salutes sardonically and vanishes, shimmering for a second before his tactical cloak hides him from sight. I don't dare leave cover; the prospect of ending up on the wrong end of that rifle isn't an enticing one.

"We'll meet again," he promises, the sound of footsteps receding until they disappear altogether.

And suddenly, the only thing I can hear is Miranda's laboured breathing next to me. Thirty seconds pass, but the assassin doesn't reappear. Did he really just leave us?

"What the fuck was that?" I hiss, letting the Rachni power fade and slumping back against the wall. "That was the Broker's enforcer?"

"Tetrimus Rakora," Miranda reiterates, taking a second to catch her own breath. "Why did he let us go?"

I don't have an answer. But the way he said that to me, something about being an anomaly. Was that part of it? What was he even talking about? What does the Shadow Broker think I am?

"It doesn't matter," I declare resolutely, "It doesn't change anything about our job. We still need that body. Liara? Feron? You guys alive?"

"Alive," Feron confirms, "Though my combat ability will be significantly decreased."

"What he said," Liara groans, trying to tie a sling with a bandage. Blue blood is already seeping through it, despite her armour's automatic application of medi-gel. It doesn't look good. Was the bullet poisoned?

"Radioactive trace elements," Liara says, answering my unspoken question. "It's breaking down the medi-gel before it can take effect." She winces, pulling the knot taut with her teeth.

Feron's wound is bleeding, though not as badly as Liara's; the bullet must have passed straight through. On closer inspection, a neat half-circle of flesh is missing from the top of his shoulder, simply carved out by the path of the slug. It looks painful but thankfully not debilitating.

"We have to keep going," I tell them remorselessly. "We're here for a purpose and that hasn't changed." Liara steels herself and nods. Feron just watches me, before he too gives a small nod. That's some loyalty he's got there; I don't think I would stick something like this out if I were just fighting for money.

Now that the Broker force's cover has been well and truly blown, more gunfire sounds from the Hegemony base. The three sentries we noticed initially are nowhere to be seen; probably cut down by the Dagger's rifle.

The door to the Hegemony's base opens without any prompting; the Broker's forces must have already cracked the encryptions on the system. There's only one guard on this side, crouched behind a steel table laid on its side for emergency cover. They still have the discipline to keep the rear entrance under guard, so they must be faring well. No panic, no shocked surprise. Just the barking of assault rifle fire as the soldier opens fire. The shots are absorbed by our barriers, Feron carefully staying back. His gear probably can't stand up to sustained fire.

Miranda opens with a burst of automatic fire, forcing the SIU trooper back behind cover. I pool my energy and unleash the strongest Throw I can muster, choosing to blast the table itself. The steel structure jolts violently backwards, flipping over the crouched solder and knocking him prone. Feron blasts his shields with an Overload and Liara kills him with a flickering Warp field, wincing at the pain to her immobilized arm.

"Map data?" I yell at Feron. He crouches beside the corpse, manually fiddling with the Batarian's omnitool.

"Downloaded," he responds tersely. "There are multiple underground levels," Feron reports, "Old eezo mining tunnels. Precise navigation will be crucial."

Feron copies and sends the layout to our omnitools in case we get separated. "Any news on how the Broker's men are doing?"

"None," the Drell replies, arm locked in place with a stasis field. He should be able to break it if he absolutely needs to; it's one of the weakest stasis fields I've ever produced. "But assuming they face the brunt of the Hegemony forces we have a chance to get in and out before they catch us."

Before long steel corridors are replaced by dirty red rock, gradually sloping down into the core of the massive asteroid. These tunnels must be thousands of years old, maybe even multiple _cycles_ old. I'd thought this was a horrible place for a safehouse but I was wrong. Supply caches and weapons fill offshoot dead ends; enough rations, water and materiel to fight a dozen wars.

"What about a rearguard?" Miranda manages in-between strides, "No competent military unit would leave all their forces at the main entrance."

I guess we won't know until we get there. "Booby traps could be a problem," I echo, watching the shadows suspiciously. Hey, it's not paranoia if everything really _is_ out to get you.

The descending tunnel leads to a large room, three more offshoot tunnels branching off. The moment we pass through four metal shutters slam down, blocking off the passageways and sealing us in. Liara kicks the shutter in frustration, I just sigh. Right after I said the thing about booby traps, too. Damn you, universe. You and Murphy's Law.

"Humans," a voice spits, hatred and contempt dripping from every syllable. "Always sticking your noses where they don't belong. Turning our allies against us. The Hegemony was about to receive a seat on the Council before you Pillars-damned monkeys interfered with everything. Now you'll see why we Batarians are the true destined rulers of the galaxy."

One shutter slides up, the one directly in front of us. According to the map we stole, that's the way we need to take to get to the lowest level of the catacombs. An armoured Batarian walks through the portal, alone before it slams shut behind him. His SIU-issue hardsuit virtually shines in the low emergency lighting, the ambient red glare eerily similar to the luminescence of Omega's surface. His head is bare and his eyes flicker with blue sparks.

"I am Captain Kla'Sorin Rakaal of the Hegemony's Special Intervention Unit," the red-skinned alien announces imperiously, motes of cerulean light still flickering in his pupils. "Blessed of the Emperor's Glorious Might, Survivor of Girifon's Curse! Master of battle and of destruction. Compared to you worthless maggots, destined slaves, I am Master! Ruler! I am a biotic God!"

Power explodes from the black-eyed alien's frame. Most biotic power quietly surges, or grows from valley to peak. Lara's power is like the tide, changing so silently and swiftly you never notice. Miranda's power comes like water from a faucet, consciously increasing and decreasing with sheer force of will.

This Batarian's power explodes in a blast of near-celestial luminescence. Blue light bright enough to blind issues from the SIU trooper, more biotic power than I've ever seen before. More than Liara. More than Wrex. More than mine, even pushing my Rachni curse to the limit. More than Erintrea and Benezia.

Even more than Saren's Reaper-augmented form.

Impossible.

"You first," the SIU trooper says mockingly, pointing at me. He flicks a finger, launching Warp larger than any I've ever seen. The rending biotic field isn't even a globe like normal, it's a solid wall of biotic fire. I fortify my barrier to the very limit, crossing my arms in front of my and kicking Life Transfusion into overdrive to survive the assault. There's no place to dodge, nowhere to hide. The Warp tears at my shield, pulling and straining as it rips it out of shape. My barrier's strength drops drastically; this Warp isn't just massive, it's powerful as well. Probably as powerful as the one that scarred Liara, if not even stronger.

My barrier shatters as the roiling Warp storm dwindles, the last dregs of biotic fire tearing at my unarmoured skin. Life Transfusion heals the injuries as soon as they appear, each rent draining my already-exhausted body a little more. We're lucky he wants to toy with us first; if he'd made that attack any bigger he could have caught us all in it and wiped us all out. Stone dust and pebbles rain down from the ceiling; new stress fractures litter the walls. Maybe he couldn't. Another attack like that and the whole cave could collapse.

The dust cloud gradually settles, revealing Miranda and Liara, stunned expressions on their faces. In between them stands Feron, arms holding a small mechanical device in his hands, firm to his chest.

The Batarian tilts his head, the arrogant smirk vanishing. In its place forms a glare of pure loathing redoubling the biotic pressure. Hell. He wasn't even at full power the first time. People have called me monster, but this guy is the real deal. Can I kill him? Maybe. Can I do it without bringing the whole cave system down? Not a chance.

"Stop!" I shout. "You make another attack like that, you'll bring this whole place down!"

The Hegemony fanatic grins manically. "Maybe. But I'll survive! You, on the other hand, will not be so fortunate."

The armoured soldier reaches one hand out to the ceiling, eyes flashing with biotic power. There's nothing I can do, I'm tapped out. I doubt I could even muster a decent throw, not that it would get through that absurd barrier. The Batarian rips his hand downwards, eyes gleaming with the fervour of a fanatic.

And then nothing happens.

That was anticlimactic.

No rumbling, no pull, no warp. The Batarian jerks his hand up and down again, and again nothing happens.

"What did you do!?" He screams, for the first time showing uncertainty.

"I didn't… nothing-" I respond, before the red-skinned humanoid crosses the space between us and swings his fist at my face. I can't even muster the energy to move; I pushed it too hard enduring the first Warp. I brace for pain as best I can but the Drell gets there first. He intercepts the fist with a sweeping hand, sliding gracefully forward and driving the edge of his open palm into the biotic's unarmoured neck. Feron's hand somehow bypasses the Batarian's barrier entirely, forcing the SIU trooper to hack and cough, stumbling backwards.

One hand still holding that strange mechanical device, Feron draws his pistol and pulls the trigger once. Brains and blood erupt from the back of the biotic's head and he drops lifelessly to the ground.

I'm sorry, did the world suddenly stop? You can't just shoot past a barrier like that. Feron certainly wasn't close enough to get the barrel of the gun past the barrier. A knife-hand strike, maybe. But a bullet?

"Is that a portable phase inhibitor?" Liara asks quietly.

"Yes," Feron answers calmly, stowing the device away.

"I didn't think they were portable yet," Miranda comments, crouching over the body of the dead trooper. We're still trapped in here, even if we managed to win the fight.

"It's a prototype," Feron admits. "Each power cell can only power the device for a few seconds and cells are prohibitively expensive. The device even more so."

A phase inhibitor… That would explain it. They're rare, hard to make and equally hard to use. Mostly they're used in prisons for biotics, to restrain and limit their abilities. They're essentially powerful electromagnets that exude a field that prevents eezo from charging with electrical fields. The resulting disharmony stops element zero from affecting anything, shutting down all biotics in its radius. Barriers, close combat, ranged attacks. Everything.

Wait, why does Feron even have a phase inhibitor? They're not cheap, not by a long shot. They have only one use. Feron having one in advance would mean he absolutely knew he was going to come into conflict with a biotic, or more than one.

"You planned on using that on us if we couldn't pay, didn't you?" I ask, sighing. It would have hit me completely by surprise, that's for sure. I'm still not completely sure how Life Transfusion works but it relies on biotics. No healing, no barrier. I'd have died in an instant. "That's why you didn't use it on Rakora outside. You wanted to save it."

"The open ground would have made the device far less effective," Feron points out. "The range of this inhibitor is extremely low. But your conjecture is not completely false." He nods and goes to the shutter, opening a program on his omnitool and starting to burn through the metal.

Miranda steals my attention away, taking scans of the corpse. "This is fascinating," she says, projecting a readout of the corpse's nervous system from the tool. "The sheer amount of element zero in his system… it's far beyond any other known case of biotics. It would have been impossible to carry a child to term with this much eezo, for the mother or the child. There's no way they would have survived."

"Obviously, that's not the case," I point out, looking at the body. No ordinary being should have that much power. It's not natural, that's for sure. But you can't make an artificial biotic. It would kill the patient.

Liara frowns, leaning in. "There's something else unusual about this man," she says, magnifying part of Miranda's scan. "His nerve endings. Most are dead but many shouldn't even be there. The Batarian nervous system is extremely simple; a network this complex must be a mutation. Girifon's disease, I think it's called? It causes hypersensitivity in the subject's nerves."

"He did say he was a survivor of Girifon's Curse," I recall.

"The eezo is congregated around the nerve clusters," Miranda murmurs, highlighting them on the scan. "But not all of them are necrotic. Most are still functional… What would have caused this?"

She rifles through his suit and then holds the resulting package up to the light cast by her tool, reading the script. "An anti-rejection drug of some kind?" She drops it, withdraws another packet. "Vials of blood plasma laced with eezo." A final bag. "Syringes."

She stands, takes a few steps back. "I don't believe it. This man… he's not biotic by birth. He was _made_ this way."

An artificial biotic? There's no way he would have survived! It's impossible! "Don't you think the Alliance looked into that when they first learned about biotics? They declared it morally and scientifically unsound. It would never work."

"Not on humans," Miranda corrects. "As for being morally unsound, well. The Hegemony was never in the running to win the Nobel Peace Prize. I don't know how they did it but the evidence is here. The Batarian Hegemony has somehow developed a process to create biotics from ordinary people."

Bleeding hell. As if the Batarians weren't already bad enough. "How?"

The Cerberus officer shrugs. "I'm not sure. But based on what we have here, I'd say transfusions of eezo-laced blood plasma. The element zero would naturally bond to nerve endings, making him biotic."

"It's not that simple," I argue, remembering my lessons. "Forty percent of nerves bonded with eezo would die immediately, even in Batarians. That amount of dead nerve tissue would kill the host."

"Unless the host could survive with only sixty percent of his nerves," Liara says slowly. "This mutation he has… he has almost twice as many nerve endings as a normal Batarian. Even with the death of forty percent of his nerves, he would survive. He'd lose most of his sense of touch, probably taste and smell as well. But he would live."

"Even then," I argue, a trace of anger in my tone. "Eezo is carcinogenic. Without the rest of the body adapting to the foreign substance in utero, you'd have tumours all over the place."

"Anti-rejection drugs," Liara counters.

"Power decay over time as bonded nerves die and become unusable."

"Additional infusions to maintain power." Miranda supplies.

"Total nervous system failure as nerve sheaths are destroyed. Even anti-rejection drugs can't stop that forever. You'd only accelerate it with additional transfusions."

"Then the host dies from cancer," Miranda allows and I smile triumphantly. Victory. "Then the Hegemony takes another sufferer of Girifon's disease and replaces the first host."

Oh. "Shit." I say at length.

A loud tearing breaks the sombre silence and Feron steps back from the hole he's carved through the shutter. "To be continued," Liara promises.

The rest of the tunnels are pitch-black, lit only by beams of light from omnitool torches. "Not much further," Feron says. "The next chamber."

The antique door slides open slowly and I storm into the room, biotics flaring.

Nothing.

The door on the other side of the room bursts open, three black-armoured soldiers rushing in, assault rifles glued to the shoulders.

For a single second, the Broker's private soldiers stand there in surprise.

Then they open fire.

* * *

_A/N: Back on schedule. Feels good, man. First things first; a massive shoutout to **LogicalPremise** for allowing me to use his OC Tetrimus Rakora in this story. LogicalPremise has written this fantastic take on Biotics that is incredibly rare and extremely well done: **The Encyclopedia Biotica**. It's something that any prospective author should DEFINITELY read, and I strongly recommend it for anyone with even a passing interest in the ME code and lore. His Encyclopedia is also where I got the idea for the Batarian biotic in this chapter. Secondly, as one guest review noted, the quotes at the top of each chapter come from a book by Tamora Pierce, a great author (the book in question is 'Trickster's Choice'). Another note, if you're going to review as a guest that's awesome; but I can't respond personally to you without an account to PM :( __Next, a massive shoutout to my editor and idea-bouncer, The Extroverted Recluse. She's always awesome and this fortnight has been no different. _

_With that done, I'm sorry for leaving you on a cliffhanger... kind of. Not really. A little bit. Look, a cliffhanger is a good thing every now and then. Either way, I hope you like the chapter! Let me know what you think, whether its plot, biotics, OCs or random tech that I've included. Reviews make for a happier author and hopefully less-confused readers._

_Finally, the poll on my profile (the one about more original content) is still up and I hope you vote in it if you haven't already! _

_I think that's about it, so I'm signing off. I'll see you guys in two weeks!_


	6. Demon

_Assassins approach a target differently to soldiers. They can't lay siege, they can't give honourable battle. In their trade, numbers are dangerous. An assassin's advantage lies in people missing him when he's around. He hits hard and fast, and then leaves. Failure the first time means it'll be that much harder the second time._

* * *

_**The Reclamation Effect**_

_**Chapter Five**_

* * *

_de·mon (noun)_

_1. an evil spirit or devil, especially one thought to possess a person or act as a tormentor in Hell._

* * *

Bullets ricochet wildly from my barrier, a barrier quickly becoming as strong as wet tissue paper. Thankfully the room is too small to fit many people in or we'd really be screwed. Liara and I both toss a Throw into the same hapless trooper and he sails backwards with enough force to momentarily stall the impending attack.

I pull back behind the blast door and Feron slams it shut and Liara fries the console with an overload. "What happened?" Miranda asks, though to me it sounds more like an order.

"Broker troopers," I wheeze, "four of them. More coming. The body wasn't there."

The Cerberus liaison freezes. "It _what_?!" she shouts.

"It wasn't there," I repeat, exasperated. I'm way too exhausted for this crap. Nothing we did on the Normandy was this long-term. "It's already been taken. We need to _go_. As in, _now_." Unlike us, the Broker's goons don't seem winded. Or wounded, for that matter.

"By who?" She asks, obviously unwilling to let this go. I grab her hand.

"Miranda, I'll be more than willing to theorycraft with you," I hiss venomously. "But that door won't last forever and if we stay here we are dead. So RUN!"

The Cerberus officer finally gets the picture, her eyes widening as hammering begins on the steel door. None of the men I saw had demolition charges but undoubtedly some of the Broker's forces would have some. And when they get there, we'll be sitting ducks.

Miranda swears vigorously, turning and running back the way we came, the rest of us in hot pursuit. A booming explosion sounds behind me as my mouth contorts into a grimace. Damn it, this is about the worst position we could be in. Fleeing from a hostile force in a second hostile force's home base. If they come at us from any more than one direction, we're dead. That's it. If they come from only one direction, we're just _mostly_ dead.

Great.

It's not great that I can barely muster the energy to run right now. Back-to-back fights against the Dagger and Batarian super-biotics aren't good for long-term health. Because of me, we're not making very god time through the tunnels. The wave of self-loathing is instantaneous but I shove it down. I don't have time for a pity party right now. Feron's shoulder wound and Liara's splinted forearm mean that Miranda's really the only one of us who can maintain a proper run and for a second I see her look back at us, calculating gleam in her eyes. Then she accelerates, sprinting faster than a normal human can. In seconds, she's gone. Vanished into the tunnels.

She just left us.

The mission's basically over; we have no idea who has the body or where they've taken it. I'm not Cerberus, Liara and Feron are active enemies of the group. It almost makes too much sense. I choke down a hysterical giggle. We'll be a speedbump against the Broker's forces, she'll be able to move quicker and hide easier. Escape is almost certain at the cost of dead weight and frenemies.

I can't really blame her. I mean, I'd do the same thing in her position.

It still sucks though.

Liara visibly sags, she knows what it means as well as I do. So does Feron, undoubtedly. He's just better at hiding his thoughts.

"What do we do…?" Liara half asks half moans. I shove her as hard as I can in the direction of the exit. She takes about half a step. "Keep moving," I rasp.

As long as you're moving, you're alive. The scarred Asari's face hardens and she nods. You can see the pain in her face at every step and still she moves. She's… tougher than I thought.

Feron takes the rear-guard position without argument; he's the only one of the three of us that can shoot passably and Liara can't fight and run at the same time. The sound of footsteps gets closer with every second and the chance of us getting out without incident dwindles to nothing.

I shove the other two forward, drawing on long-depleted biotics. The very touch of the power makes me want to throw up. I hold onto it anyway. All of us aren't going to get out of this one. It might as well be the guy that's already dying that bites it. "Go," I hiss, sorrowful colour seeping from my lungs. But it's a peaceful colour, too. I am, after all, doing what I was always meant to do.

"I won't-" Liara starts, recoiling as I punch her in the face. Given my level of strength right now it's more like a poke but it gets the point across.

"Liara. Go. Now."

Tears spring to her eyes and I realise I just echoed Shepard's last words to her. An apology dies on my lips, unsaid. Feron takes her arm with his good side, the two of them disappearing into the labyrinth.

Honestly, I don't think I would want it any different. These tunnels almost feel like home, in a way. Even though I was denied the right to die at her side, dying in battle against the Queen's foes is almost as worthy. This time Life Transfusion comes as easily as breathing, stronger than ever. Two Broker troopers round the corner, almost on cue.

Killing them is simple. The first with a swift application of biotics, a touch of throw followed by a quick Reave. The added power will keep my barrier strong. Not that I expect to survive this, but killing as many enemies as I can is desirable. The second reacts more swiftly, rolling under my Pull. Though he was never the target; a large rock springs free from the cave wall and throws itself into the back of the trooper's head, sending him reeling. One quick strike and the Turian dies. It's almost too easy.

Now. To chase the Broker forces or follow Liara and Feron? The deathsinger wants to charge the enemy, the human to fall back. Which am I, again? I honestly don't know. How curious. But I'm sure my friends can tell me, so I'll follow them.

I catch up to them, too. They aren't moving that quickly.

"Liara," I ask politely, "What am I?"

The wounded Asari just looks at me, expression incredulous.

"Goddess, I thought I'd never see you again. Are you alright? What about the Broker's forces?"

Oh. She didn't answer my question. That's sad. Should I kill her? After all, she _did_ fail to protect the Queen.

"You took your sweet time," Miranda says. She sounds irritated.

"You're back," I exclaim. "I thought you left us behind."

She frowns. "I considered it," she comments dryly. "But if I'm going to get Shepard's body with the rest of my team dead, you're needed."

"And what are those?" I ask, pointing serenely. I had thought the enemy would be here by now. Well, if their scouts were killed I suppose they'd be a little slower.

"Grenades from dead Batarians." Miranda smirks. "Bombs away."

The Cerberus operative tosses the explosive cluster down the tunnel, turning and fleeing. A cacophonous explosion blooms in the tunnel, a wave of fire all but engulfing us as we flee. The actual fire doesn't penetrate our shields but the heat burns. Rocks cascade around us, sealing off the passage.

The pain wakes me up.

What the hell was I thinking? I get lucky enough to survive because the Broker's men are playing it safe and I keep it on? I need a freaking holiday.

I shut Life Transfusion off and my vision blurs and hazes like I'm underwater. My legs go out from under me and Miranda picks me up, not even breaking stride. She slings me over her shoulder and the next thing I know we're back at the main level.

"Did we lose them?" Liara asks.

"Unlikely," Feron grunts, his own chest heaving. "One tunnel destroyed will delay them. It will not stop them."

"Give me a second, I can walk." I groan, feeling the effects of no sleep and self-cannibalism. I've had a lot of injuries recently and nothing to power the regeneration. Marshalling what little reserves I have left feels like I'm grinding my bones to pieces; for all I know I am.

A bullet pings off the wall. Six Broker troopers spring into action, rifles glued to their shoulders as they advance. At least there's good cover. Miranda fires back, momentarily pinning the enemy down.

"Reinforcements," she summarises curtly, cutting the steaming heat sink and jacking another in without so much as a glance. "There's no longer a reason to stay here. If the Broker has the body by now they will have left the field of battle. We should retreat." She looks at me, as if wanting my opinion.

Since when did I become the one calling the shots? Oh, that's right. Because I'm the only one that got a good look at the place Shepard's body was supposedly stored.

"As if the original group weren't enough," I mutter, "Agreed." Throwing a lump of debris into the back of a Broker trooper's head distracts him for a second. We'll need more than that. "Split and scatter," I order. "Meet at designated neutral ground. Everyone hear?"

"Understood, designated neutral ground." Feron sighs, his pistol cracking at the enemy.

"Yes," Liara sounds, using Feron's distraction to move back.

"Will do," Miranda finishes, reporting over the radio. All the gunfire is making it rather difficult to hear normally.

"Radio silence until we meet up, or if you have an emergency," I say. "Good luck." Miranda lobs a pilfered flashbang grenade into the air, using the temporary confusion to create an opening. We both break cover and run, doing nothing but putting as much distance as we can between the private soldiers and ourselves. Liara and Feron take off together, splitting us into pairs. Soon we'll split again, hopefully giving the Broker's soldiers too many leads to follow.

"You never pulled the pin on that one did you?" I ask, hissing each word out between strides. The Cerberus officer just smirks, her own words coming much more easily. Damn enhanced physique.

"The disorientation would have stopped us from running," she explains. "Well trained as they are, they reacted too fast for their own good." She nods and we separate, sprinting into Omega's labyrinthine maze.

I never claimed to be a fast runner or particularly physically able in general, but nobody survives a job against a rogue Spectre without some serious cardio. Even so, the only thing that keeps me going is repeating the mantra drilled into every recruit at Alliance military bases: _'endurance lasts as long as you want it to'_. For once the Blue Suns help us; keeping the streets under virtual martial law takes ordinary people off the streets so we have space to run. The Broker's men won't follow too fast, there's a chance that we could turn and ambush them. To chase would be an overextension and they're too skilled to make that kind of mistake twice.

Still, no point in taking chances. I sprint for all I'm worth, not really caring about direction except for _away_. I can get my bearings later. By the time my lungs give out, wheezing and straining, I must have gone a kilometre. A poor showing. Though on the back of fighting the Dagger, a superpowered Batarian and the Broker's private army I think it's pretty damn good.

A gunshot informs me that Omega evidently disagrees. I instinctively fall behind the empty front of a shop. If I crouch I can get my whole body behind the counter, careful to keep a few inches away from the metal so my body heat doesn't seep into the metal. It'll stop me from being seen on thermal, at least.

Did they follow me? How? Not that it matters, damn it. I chance a look, hurriedly ducking again as a rifle round pings off my barrier. Not Broker soldiers, which is a small relief.

Eclipse mercenaries, two of them. Not all that much better. Damn it, why now? They're probably pretty pissed that their squad was killed and the body stolen. I doubt they got paid before the handover, so they must be out money as well.

And if there are two now, there'll undoubtedly be more in a few seconds. I need to leave.

There's a door by the back of the shop; unless both of the Eclipse mercs are sharpshooters they won't be able to get me before I make the door. Nobody in this district sticks their head out when there's a firefight going on, so there's no way I can use bystanders to lose myself in the crowd. None to use as hostages or bait, either.

I snap up out of cover, running for the door, lifting one of the mercenaries off her feet with a wave of swirling green energy. Using biotics nearly makes me pass out but it's the only advantage I have. The second tracks me with his rifle, firing hard before I manage to throw him away. I hate having to run. I shouldn't run from prey, prey should fear me, run from me! I hesitate, turning back toward my attackers.

Something hits me like a tiny sledgehammer, pushing me back. A lance of red-hot pain drills into my stomach and I stagger back, grabbing the door and falling through the portal to safety. Damn Rachni instincts. I can't afford to act like a mindless beast against mercenaries with guns, stupid idiot!

Every breath hurts. I manage to feel around for the pain, my hand comes away slick with blood. Questing fingers find a ragged hole in my shirt, a hair above and to the right of my navel. Damnation, that hurts. I could heal it, maybe. That might not be the best solution right now. Even if I managed to draw the energy from my exhausted body I'd be risking all kinds of internal problems. Short term, I doubt I'd have the strength to move at all. If more Eclipse troopers found me that weak I'd be dead. Medi-gel would be a wonderful thing to have on hand right now but Miranda has the reserve and I'm all out. Fighting the Broker and the SIU doesn't come cheap.

And finally, healing is all well and good _after_ the bullet is no longer in the wound. There's no matching wound on my back, so the chunk of metal must be lodged somewhere in my intestines, what a charming thought. It better not be poisoned or radioactive. So- _ouch_- priorities.

One, open an omnitool line to Liara. This constitutes an emergency in my book; they'll be able to track the call. Two, hope the two jokers who shot me think I'm dead. Three, wait for help while avoiding Eclipse. Hopefully it won't be that difficult, this is Blue Suns territory and I doubt they'll enjoy seeing their rivals trespassing in force. Four, decide whether to heal the wound and get the bullet extracted later. Five, bandage the wound if it's not healed. I don't know how much I can use Life Transfusion without risk, better safe than sorry. Finally, pretend to be a corpse. I giggle absurdly at the last point. There's certainly enough blood lying around.

More gunfire erupts from the front of the shop, out of sight. Liara? I didn't think she'd be here so quickly. We must have been running in the same direction. One of the Eclipse soldiers, hefting an obviously broken arm, falls through the door next to me, a line of bullet holes stitched across his chest. I guess he doesn't mind the arm so much, then. Ha ha.

"That's both of them," I hear an unfamiliar voice say. Flanged. Turian? "Fucking E-boys, the hell are they doing here? Ah, screw it. Thak, anything else?"

A shadow falls over me and I realise with a start that it's not Liara. Blue armour, white decal. The same decal plastered at every street corner, like a dog marking its territory. Blue Suns. Probably defending their turf, no better than Eclipse. They're the enemy. I try to raise my gun with a trembling arm but it feels like it weighs a thousand tons.

A heavy impact rips the gun from my fingers, my arm falling limply to the side. A foot or a fist or something? I can't see straight. My body aches and hurts all over and the hand clenched over my wound isn't helping like it needs to.

"Spirits," the merc exclaims in surprise. "A live one. A bleeder, too. Thak, get your ass over here double time. This fucker's got to be involved somehow." Heal yourself, I order blearily. Start Life Transfusion. Get up.

But I can't. To be a deathsinger is to die and I hurt too badly to reach into that shadowed part of my mind. My vision begins to fade, I can feel my body starting to slide down the wall. Oh shit, I finally realise. I could die here. This could be the end. Of everything.

Sound begins to fade, light all but gone. Dimly, I hear the Blue Sun talk again. To Thak, whoever he is. "You've got the medi-gel, right? He'll die before we get him in a chair otherwise…"

* * *

I'm alive.

Fantastic.

That's a good start.

It's soured by not being able to move my arms and legs more than a few millimetres.

"He's awake," I hear someone say. The lights are too bright, even squinting sears my retinas. I can hear footsteps and armour moving, so I'm not alone. I can smell… grease, and metal. And old blood, and someone who needs a shower. My nose wrinkles involuntarily.

The air tastes like cigarette ash and rust. It's cold. I can feel the metal of the chair I'm sitting on and some kind of restraint over my wrists and ankles. Bound, then, not drugged. Good.

My sight slowly returns and I can't stop the spike of pain that shoots through my body when I try to move my head. My neck goes limp, returning my head to its former drooping position. Belatedly, I notice my shirt missing, the skin around my navel a swollen and inflamed mass. The bullet wound. My skin is drawn in a pattern that suggests sutures and despite the ugly appearance it looks better than I expected. They must have given me medi-gel. More courtesy than I expected from Omega's thugs.

"Hey. Brat." An armoured hand strikes my cheek, snapping my head to the side. I raise my head slowly, trying and failing to hide the pain of the movement. An armoured Batarian stands in front of my chair in my cell. No, not a cell. It's more specious, no bars. A one-room apartment? A makeshift kitchen is behind the mercenary, so it's not intended as a jail. An outpost? I look around. Eight Suns, most of them lounging around or talking with others. A little steel table is next to my chair, a tiny shard of bloody metal on it. The bullet, I guess.

The Blue Suns officer grabs my jaw and forces me to meet his four-eyed gaze, glaring angrily at me, studying my features. "Don't know him," he grunts to one of his men. "Must be new."

Was I brought here to be interrogated? How much time has passed? I need to escape. The sooner the better.

I'm snapped back to reality by another armoured fist. I feel my teeth cut into my cheek with the force of the blow, tasting coppery blood sliding down my throat. He bellows into my face, "The last few days we've had absolute chaos, by the Pillars. First that fire that nearly burned down half the District- we had to get fucking Aria T'Loak of all people to help. Now there are bodies in the streets, all-out firefights between unknown groups, people who pay protection to us getting their shit blown up. Now the fucking Eclipse is moving in on our turf. My bosses are breathing down my neck for answers and you're going to tell me exactly _what the fucking hell is going on!_"

Well. An impressive tirade, but I'd be much more likely to smile if I weren't recovering from being _shot_. I suppose common courtesy isn't in fashion anymore. Well if I don't get food, water or a bed, they don't get an answer. Particularly about that fire part. Aria would not be pleased.

"Having some problems?" I slur drunkenly, unable to stop a satisfied smile from breaking out across my face.

The Batarian's dark-red skin flushes an angry purple and he raises his arm to hit me again. I brace myself for the blow, oddly comforted that I'm already in so much pain I doubt I'll register the hit too much.

The strike never comes. I open my eyes curiously. The purple tint has faded from his face and instead of blind rage a cunning smirk rests on his face. "You offworlders think you're so clever. Well, if you won't tell me, then I'll ask your mind directly. Sergeant Aversa."

An Asari materialises next to my interrogator, stepping into my field of vision without a sound. She must have been behind me all this time and I never noticed. That's not a good omen.

"Look into my eyes," she says. "This won't hurt a bit." Oh, fuck me. She's going to meld with me.

Time slows down, that moment stretching on. A crossroads of sorts, I suppose.

I'm tired. Exhausted. In agony. Starving. Freezing. Refusing to speak is one of the harder things I've done recently and now they're going to have an Asari look directly inside my head. In one instant, I make a resolution: nobody is to know. Nobody. No matter what the cost, my mind is my own. I will not allow ANYONE to influence me. Not the Rachni. Not a crazed biotic terrorist. Not even the Reapers themselves.

I will not be controlled. I _refuse_ to be controlled. I will let the galaxy **_burn _**before I am a pawn in someone else's game.

"Embrace eternity," Sergeant Aversa sighs, breathing out as her eyes become black as pitch.

I feel the touch of her consciousness on mine, like the Rachni Queen but infinitely gentler.

And the moment the connection is established, I pour every piece of shock imagery I possess into it.

The entire history of the Rachni species. Blood and fire and death. Genocides on an unimaginable scale. Slaughter, fields of ash and destruction. A span of time so far removed from mortal understanding that it shatters reason itself.

And the Reapers. Into that tenuous connection I throw everything I know of the Reapers, their machinations, their atrocities. The fate of the Protheans, the endless cycles of pure obliteration. Millions of years of murder and genocide, infinitely repeating time and time again with pure, chilling mechanical _precision_.

Everything that has taken me years to understand, to comprehend? I force her to experience it all in a single microsecond.

Aversa falls backwards as the connection shatters, blood leaking from her tear ducts ears and nose, her eyes sightless. She twitches as she hits the ground, foaming from the mouth. In seconds she lies still as death.

Silence reigns over the outpost.

"What the fuck…" one of them breathes, stunned. The Batarian looks at the corpse of his officer, his fury rekindling in a second. He strikes me hard enough to knock my chair to the ground, bouncing my head against the steel floor. Red rage consumes me, pent up for weeks and months with no release. Even placated by the news of Project Lazarus, I'm not what you could call certifiably _sane_. Not that I care. I scream my hatred at them; roar my wordless, overwhelming fury. I hiss curses and death at them.

How dare they. How dare they raise their hand against _ME_! These lowly worms unfit to grub in the dirt beneath the feet of the Queen's chosen!

"_Die_."

* * *

I don't remember what happened next.

I don't think I want to, either.

The next thing I remember is standing in the destroyed room, half a manacle hanging from one wrist. Blood and sweat stain my hands, my chest, my lips and jaw. The puncture on my torso is gone, healed over with only a slight circle of scar tissue to mark the wound. My body heaves like I just ran a marathon. The broken and twisted bodies of almost a score of mercenaries lie against the walls, the floor, anywhere they can. The steel floor runs slick with blood, red and blue and yellow and purpleandallmakingbrownand_yes_…

I shut my eyes. Darkness is preferable to this mutilation.

Because it _is_ mutilation. Armoured or not, the corpses of the Blue Suns barely look bipedal. Most are missing at least one limb and all of them have armour torn away, clothes shredded, chunks of flesh missing from their bodies. The foul smell of rot and death lingers in the room, the smell of ruptured intestines and failed bowels. The smell is in my nose, in my mouth, in my eyes and ears. It's everywhere.

Only one lives, an Asari lying on her back near my feet. Fistfuls of flesh are simply gone from her chest, her ribs torn open, organs exposed to the air. She coughs wetly, spilling more blood on the already-covered steel.

"What are you?" she gasps, and I know it will be her last words.

"You Asari have your Ardat-Yakshi," I groan, forcing the words through an aching throat. It comes out in a coarse, inhuman growl. Tempered by the foul taste in my mouth. "You think you're the only species with demons?"

Then I raise my foot, enveloped in green biotic power, and crush her head like a grape.

I call it a mercy.

I never could deceive myself.

The door on the far side of the room bursts open, three figures storming through, guns out. They stop abruptly at the sight of the room, one of them retreating almost immediately.

Miranda, Feron and Liara, who is currently occupied vomiting.

Well.

This is going to be fun to explain.

I turn off Life Transfusion. At the moment, the only thing I can feel at the sight of that power is disgust.

A tidal wave of weariness and nausea hits me the instant I let it go; the world shakes alarmingly. I catch myself on a bent metal sink, only a few seconds later do I recall it's not actually attached to the wall. And it's covered in blood. Did I use it as a weapon? That's kind of funny actually.

"Parker?" Miranda asks, her voice is all distorted and broken up. Why is she speaking like that? Was she injured when we separated? I didn't think she was. "Hearme?"

"I hear you," I mumbled, dazed. Liara takes my shoulder, helping me support my own weight. Wow, I'm starving. If there was something in my stomach I'm pretty sure I'd have thrown it up, just because of how hungry I am… and in pain too. I thought I healed myself? Gotta heal that wound…

My green power flickers and vanishes instead of surging. My body contorts involuntarily, slipping from the scarred Asari's grasp and hitting the bloody floor hard. Bile jets from my mouth as I cough hoarsely, struggling not to curl into a ball in the face of instant agony. The pain at least clears my head a little… Something's wrong with me. Something major.

"Help," I gurgle deliriously, somehow finding my predicament funny. I'm like a ladybug that's fallen on its back, waving its arms. Just without the waving. Hahaheheha.

"He's delirious and in shock," Miranda concludes, pulling me back to my feet. Wow, she's a lot stronger than she looks. Oh wait, test tube baby. I forgot. I wonder if I'm going to die? Huh, that was a really fast topic change… Something must be wrong with me! Logic. "We have to get him to neutral ground," Miranda orders, taking control I guess? Feron and Liara probably won't argue. Well, Liara not yet anyway.

"Enemy presence?" Miranda barks, drawing another stupefied chortle from my lungs. Barking. Like a dog. Haha.

Wait, why am I getting carried again? I'm supposed to be stronger than this. And I can cheat! Life Transfusion is basically cheating, right? I'm borrowing power from later to use now. Kind of. So since I'm going to be better later, I can be better now! I'm smart.

This time, the Rachni heritage doesn't even activate. The pain just obliterates my consciousness, light vanishing like water down a plughole.

* * *

The first thing I hear when I open my eyes is the beeping of a heart monitor. I'm inside, the roof is dark and filled with old pipes. Omega, then? Probably. Bleeding hell, I feel like crap. What happened? I remember waking up in a room filled with bodies. People I killed. After that, nothing. Did I pass out after Liara, Miranda and Feron found me? I must have.

"Ah. Awake. Good, good. Have questions."

I try to turn my head but I honestly can't find the strength. But the voice is Salarian and it rings a bell in my memories. Salarian, on Omega, medical equipment… Then I remember where I specified to regroup.

The speaker takes a step into my field of vision, the deformed cranial horn confirming my suspicion.

"Yes, yes, many questions," Mordin Solus continues. "Physiology conventionally impossible. Experimental test subject?" He almost shoots the question at me, large eyes unrepentantly staring at me.

"I… what?" I'm not wearing a shirt, I see. Or pants. Thankfully I at least have underclothes. Even if they are a bit bloody. How did that get there? I swear, blood is like sand. You find it everywhere.

"Were you experimental test subject?" Mordin repeats. His mouth reminds me of a hummingbird's wings.

"Not that I know of," I wheeze, trying for humour. I don't think it works.

"Body is combination of levo-amino and dextro-amino protein chains," Mordin states, his eyes still not moving. "Structure impossible in human genetics. Any genetics. Must be engineered."

"It was accidental," I grunt, trying to push myself into a seated position. The Salarian places one small hand on my chest and easily pushes me down.

"Explains lack of documentation," the Salarian comments, seemingly to himself. "Will respect patient's confidentiality if you wish. Still, difficult to treat without understanding."

I level my best unamused glance at him; I expected more subtle fishing from an ex-STG agent.

"Dextro physiology not based on Turian or Quarian genetic structure," Mordin continues, "Potentially original protein sequences? Unlikely, human genetic engineering insufficient for present results. Interspecies collaboration? Human ideal for genetic testing. No, no, would have seen documentation of progress. True accident? What potential source? Another dextro-amino race? Only Turian and Quarian in galaxy. Unless… No, Rachni also dextro-amino but extinct."

I let out a sigh of relief, trying it make it sound annoyed. Annoyed is better than letting him in on how close he just got.

"Unless not actually extinct. Shepard's team visited Noveria, details classified. Binary Helix biowar division investigated… discovered Rachni specimen? Saren's interest suggests likelihood. Hm. Yes. Chance of pre-planning minimal. An accident? Unusual. But, stranger things." The Salarian finally steps back from the bed, nodding slightly. Well… shit.

"Condolences." He tacks on as an afterthought.

"What?" I ask, still trying and failing to get up. I'm just too exhausted.

"New life must be problematic. Uniqueness of situation results in lack of structure, organization. Difficult to adjust. Also, body slowly dying."

"Yeah, I know," I say, sighing to myself. At least I'll be able to hold out until the Reapers come. The chance of me living to my actual expiration date is pretty slim, to be honest.

"Biotics gained from accident?" Mordin quizzes. I suppose if he's treating whatever I've got he has a right to know…

"No. From birth," I slur. Guess I'm not up for extended conversation yet, huh.

"Unusual level of potency," The doctor remarks, typing on his datapad.

"Enhanced by the incident," I answer. I never expected talking about this stuff to feel so liberating, actually.

"Understand. Now. Onto your condition."

"How bad is it?" I ask, wincing. My side really, really hurts.

"Extracted left kidney," Mordin starts genially. I burst into a coughing fit.

"You," I sputter incoherently. "You what?!"

"Organ was necrotic. Nonfunctional. Had to be done. Structural damage also apparent in stomach, lungs, heart and liver. Intestines mostly untouched. Muscle tissue heavily damaged but repairable. No significant external damage. Spleen also removed. Impressed at your survival considering severity of injuries. Lost you once."

Bleeding hell. I died? For how long? I knew overusing Life Transfusion would have its cost. But this?

"Can… can any of it be recovered? Cloned organs? Transplants?"

The Salarian shakes his head. "No. Physiology too unique, successful transplant impossible. Cloning unfeasible, existing stem cells corrupted. Moot, as chance of successfully synthesising levo-dextro hybrid organ…" he inhales a deep breath, releasing it quietly. "Unlikely."

"How long have I been out?" I ask. I don't even know if I'm taking it in but I can feel a surgical scar on my side. No wonder it hurts.

"Two and a half days. Fed intravenously. Recommend additional three weeks bed rest for full recovery."

Three days? Shit. It's over, then. If the Broker stole the body, it's in the hands of the Collectors now. If the Batarians held onto it, it'll be in Hegemony space now. As for bed rest, three weeks? Heh. That might even be enough time to figure out what the hell I'm going to do from now.

There's a more pressing matter though. "Mordin, look. I know you retired from the STG, but can you please not tell them about me?"

The Salarian looks at me for a moment, before walking calmly over to the side of the room and picking up a pistol. Which he proceeds to point straight at me.

"Unconscious when brought in to clinic, already knew name. Not surprising, advertising across station. Knowledge of STG status…" Another long, deep breath, released quietly. "Surprising."

I… really should have expected this. "Look, don't shoot me, okay? I know some things. Like how you're a brilliant doctor, former STG. I just want to get better. Hell, I think you're doing a damn good thing here. I just really don't want to get chased around the galaxy by every mad scientist with a scalpel."

The Salarian's eyes narrow fractionally.

"I said _mad_ scientist," I grumble. "Like I said, I just want this to stay quiet and usually I'm not so talkative and I'm sorry but- Wait." A prospect occurs to me and my placating look turns slightly accusatory. "Did you drug me?"

The Salarian shifts uncomfortably. "Initial anaesthesia during operation unsuccessful, you awoke screaming. Heavier dose required, would have killed ordinary human. May still be affecting higher functions. Decision making."

Good lord. What kind of drug stays around for three freaking days? And still has enough power to make your brain feel like cotton wool? "What kind of drug does that?" I grunt.

"Combination of Elcor and Krogan sedatives," The doctor replies, a touch of satisfaction in his voice. "My own invention. Now. Apologies for startling you. Doctor/patient relationship of utmost importance. Will keep your secret."

You know, it probably says something about me that my initial reaction is to call him a liar. Still, what am I going to do, drag him with me? If I could even move. Wipe his computers? Yeah, because that'll make him cooperative. Pay him off? I doubt I have much money left with all the expenses I've been picking up. New armour, new guns, tickets to Omega, food and now medical bills. I had a good stockpile before Saren but with this? I'm almost broke.

Speaking of medical bills, might as well bite the bullet. "How much do I owe you?" I wince, hoping it won't be more than what I have.

The Salarian waves his hand. "Not an issue. Funds provided by human female acquaintance. Besides, pleasure to work with unique patients. Challenging."

With that, the ex-STG agent turns his back on me, scrubbing his hands in the sink. Miranda paid to keep me alive? Better yet, _Cerberus_ paid? God forbid they do something helpful for once… It's probably just a ploy. Put me in their debt, something like that. But Miranda could have left us all to die. And she didn't.

"That's it?" Isn't there supposed to be something else? Enforced bed rest, medication? Something like that?

The doctor doesn't stop, doesn't even spare a glance. "Yes. Bed rest recommended. No space here. More patients to treat. Body will heal in time."

"Where are my friends?"

Mordin sighs, probably at the incessant questioning. He walks through the door without giving an answer, leaving the door unlocked behind him. Almost immediately it slides open again, admitting Miranda, Feron and Liara. Liara leads them, her arm no longer splinted. Looks like I'm not the only one who got treatment. I wonder if that was on the Cerberus payroll as well?

"I'm so glad you're okay," Liara says, sniffling slightly, burrowing her head into my chest. Hey, it wasn't that bad, was it? I mean, sure, I might have technically died in surgery, but I'm better now. What do I even do in this situation? Hug her back?

I loop weak arms around her back, more resting on her than actually holding. All it does is make the Asari cry even more.

I suppose this isn't too bad.

"There has… been a new development," Feron intones solemnly. Or that could just be his voice.

"Can you walk?" Miranda asks bluntly.

"Your concern for my health is touching," I retort, trying to move my legs. They feel like someone else's, barely responding. But every second more of the sedative wears off and my range of motion increases. "Give my ten minutes."

Lawson smirks. "Please. Dr. Solus told me everything there was to know about your condition. Since when do you talk to a patient about their health?"

Even Feron cracks a small smile. Damn it, I'm a qualified medic. Don't I get some say in this? Then the Cerberus officer and the Drell exchange glances and the air of humour disappears in an instant. Miranda quietly helps Liara up, propping a datapad on my chest so I can see it.

"What's this?" I ask.

"An ultimatum," Liara answers quietly.

* * *

"Greetings, citizens of Omega," The voice begins, the light dim. All I can see is a pair of crossed legs, either human female or asari. The tone is arrogant, cocky. I only know one person with that tone and that physique.

The lights slowly brighten, illuminating the room just enough to make out the features of the speaker.

Aria T'Loak, of course.

"Today is an illustrious day. Today, something rather valuable has come into my possession. Well. I say today but really it was already in my possession." She leans closer, an undertone of threat in her voice. "_Everything_ on Omega is _mine_," she claims fiercely, eyes hard. I really hope that's a message to the Shadow Broker.

The camera pans out as the ruler of Omega continues. "Every life. Every piece of cargo." She smirks. "Every last tunnel."

"We think Aria drilled from another tunnel into the safehouse," Miranda explains.

"So here's what's going to happen," Aria continues as the camera continues to zoom out slowly. "I have before me the corpse of the legendary Commander Shepard. In its original packaging, of course."

The camera completes its zoom, revealing the black freeze-casket. Holy hell. She managed to snatch it from all three groups without any of them knowing? Yeah, I've seriously been underestimating her.

"I don't have much use for it, so I'm starting an auction. You have three days to bid. Winner gets the corpse." Aria gives one more smirk, a grin big enough to make the Cheshire Cat look like a small-timer. "Good luck."

The screen goes dead.

"It was posted to Aria's Omnitube page a few hours after we arrived here," Feron explains. "The auction ends in fourteen hours."

"And?" I ask. There's something he's not telling me.

Miranda takes a deep breath. "I contacted the Illusive Man and we made a bid of five hundred million credits. Then the Shadow Broker made his bid. Two billion credits."

Two _billion_?

"I'm sorry, I must have misheard you. Did you just say two _billion_?"

"Two thousand millions, yes," Feron confirms. "Even with Miranda's benefactor we cannot match that sum."

Defeat is an odd sensation. It just weighs you down until all you can feel is your own worthlessness.

"So that's it," I groan, voice dead. "We're done."

The edges of the Drell's mouth curve into a tiny smile. "Well. No. Not quite."

* * *

_A/N: Many things are happening, I know. _

_First, Mordin. Did I manage to get his character down? His diction is certainly different from any other character in the 'verse, it took a few tries. I hope it sounds authentic! Aria's action here is also very deliberate, and I hope that her deviousness wasn't over or underdone. I figure she's capable of something this duplicitous. Poor Batarians, never knew what they were getting into. _

_Onto the torture/interrogation scene and its aftermath; I hope this is a polarizing moment for Parker (or his fans, I guess). I've had a few people tell me that they find Life Transfusion overpowered and in a sense they're right. It is a ludicrously powerful skill. But, it has its downsides. In this case, it was almost fatal and Parker will have to get used to living with only one kidney for the rest of his life. Plus, the damage it causes can't be adequately healed by medi-gel and if you try it takes a huge amount of the stuff. So on pain of death, we'll say goodbye to the OP-ness for the moment, back to basics for our protagonist (I hesitate to call him 'hero')._

_Finally, enormous thanks go to __**The Extroverted Recluse**__ for her help in making this story what it is. Massive thanks also go to __**LogicalPremise**__, for allowing me to use his OC Tetrimus Rakora. Definitely check out both their work if you have the chance!_

_But yeah, again thanks to all the people who have voted in the poll, it really helps me. Thanks again to all the people who review, I really love the conversations your reviews spark! If you have any questions or recommendations or feedback, drop a review. It only takes a second or five!_

_Until next time, have an awesome time :D_


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